


Nine Times Nikola Tesla Got His Memories Back, and One Time He Got To Keep Them

by naiadwrites



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: 1906, 1910, 1917, 1945, F/M, Memory Alteration, Time Loop, WWII, frustrated Nikola
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-21 03:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2452505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naiadwrites/pseuds/naiadwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helen Magnus lived a hundred and thirteen years over again. Nikola Tesla disappeared from her life (the first time through) for over six decades. We Teslen folks know what really happened. And what poor Nikola had to go through to keep time itself from fraying at the seams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Chartreuseian, my beta for this!
> 
> Welcome to the ride! Remember time is out of order. It's all timey-wimey confusing and fun.I have 6 out of 10 vignettes written, and hope to post on Monday/Tuesday and Thursday/Friday, assuming I can finish the last 4 vignettes quickly.

**The Fifth Time**

Rome, 2008

Nikola Tesla slumped to the dirt floor of the Roman catacombs, his intestines threatening to leak out of the huge hole in his abdomen. Jack the Bloody Ripper indeed. He clutched at their disgusting slipperiness, blood pouring from the wound even as his body tried to heal him. He wasn't sure it would be fast enough. He was going to die because he was an idiot. He hadn't seen Helen in six decades, and he actually thought inviting her to conquer the world with him and some mindless idiots would be a good proposal. Nikola Tesla, technological genius, cretin at romance.

"I am an idiot. A vile, pathetic idiot. And I am too young to die."

"Very true. You are too young to die, and you are an idiot, Nikola Tesla. But I love you."

He turned and there was Helen. Not the Helen who John had just whisked away, the one in the short business skirt and the condemning eyes. No, this Helen looked at him with concern and…was that love in her eyes? Had she just said…his head exploded in pain, as decades worth of memories fell back into place.

He let out a gasping breath then chuckled ruefully. "I couldn't manage two whole hours in this masquerade without getting myself killed, lbujavi. You see why I insisted we remove my memories again? If I could remember what our life was truly like together, I could never act like such an unmitigated ass."

"You are still an ass, Nikola. But you're my idiotic ass. Let us save your life. You have a date with the younger me in three months at Bhallassam." She pressed a kiss to his brow, then motioned behind her, where a tall, dark haired man and a woman with red gold curls stood with a stretcher and an array of portable medical equipment. Helen held her wrist in front of her, tantalizingly close to his mouth.

"Drink now, Nikola. My blood will do more to heal you than all the medical wizardry at my disposal."

He stuck out his tongue at his wife, before his teeth distending and his eyes grew black. He bit gently, and the ecstasy of her flavor almost dimmed the pain from his wound. He would miss this when his memories were blocked again. He would dream of it, he was certain.

**The Second Time**

New York, 1911

Nikola paced along the roof of the Waldorf-Astoria, too agitated for the pigeons to work their calming magic upon him. It had been an unmitigated disaster. The oscillator* should have worked perfectly, it should have been a revolutionary means of creating cheap electricity. The harmonic potential was unlimited! How was he to know that the vibrations with call forth some Earth abnormal and create an earthquake in the middle of New York?

He flexed his hand, the bones still aching from having to slam his fist into the oscillator, destroying it. The police had been banging on the door, his Houston Street labs had been shaking, glass breaking, pipes groaning, as some kind of mud man rose up from the floor and started making droning noising at his oscillator that sounded like a cow in heat. His oscillator worked just fine, but it also managed to mimic that mating call of some creature that Helen would likely find fascinating. But Helen wasn't here, no matter how many times he had tempted her with the thrilling freedom of New York.

He stood staring out at the lights of the city blindly, his mind swirling in a tempest of self-pity. He didn't want to think of Helen. He'd last seen her three years previously, in '08. First, she'd asked him to help her track down a vampire codex in Austria. It had been spring in Vienna. They'd found the book, which was disappointingly incomplete, and managed to rescue a pair of flying purple fuzzy creatures that he'd not bothered to learn the name of. He'd taken her to the Prater amusement park despite the crowds and mess, just to see her laugh.

He'd held her hand, stroked her cheek, and finally gotten up to nerve to kiss her. He'd been courting her, he knew. She'd pulled him into her room, and he'd made love to her. He'd worshipped her, somehow knowing how to make love to her, how to bring her pleasure, without having any idea how he'd acquired the knowledge. He was simply meant for her. She'd cried afterwards in his arms, tears of joy she'd said. She'd kissed his shoulder, and he'd fallen asleep to the sound of her steady breathing. He'd woken alone, a note on his pillow that simply said, "Not yet. Someday."

He's fled to Budapest for a week, tried to drink himself into a stupor – almost impossible for a vampire. Then the damn British government had stopped his trip back to New York, dragging in all of the Five in a hunt for that cockroach, Adam Worth. She'd worn high collars – trying to cover up the marked he'd sucked into her collarbones. And she could barely look at him. Eyes only for that hovering, possessive bastard, John Druitt; eyes filled with pain and heartache. He could feel "someday" growing farther and farther away.

He dreamed of that night over and over again. And when he wasn't dreaming of a soft blonde Helen and sheets in Vienna that smelled of springtime, he was dreaming of his dark haired Helen – the one that lived only in his mind. Harder, bolder, his dark goddess rode him as though he were a stallion, argued with him like a gorgeous hussy, sucked on his cock with dancing timeless eyes, and challenged him to work through problems he'd dismissed as impossible. She was sweat and tears and laughter. She was his lifeblood. She would be ashamed of him now, brought down to be the laughing stock of New York, of the world.

"The stronolith apologized for the misunderstanding, you know."

He spun around, somehow unsurprised that his maudlin thoughts had called her up out of thin air. Her dark hair wafted around her face in the hot breeze of the exhaust from the roof fans, the orange light of the city glowed against her skin, making her seem otherworldly as she stepped out of the darkness.

"Apparently the frequency was exactly the same as a larval stronolith in distress. If you change the rate of recoil by a few hundredths, it shouldn't happen again."

"Helen?" He couldn't keep the awe out of his voice. He truly was going mad.

"In the flesh." She shrugged out of her overcoat and draped it over the duffel bag that was behind her on the ground. It seemed odd that a hallucination would carry luggage, but he was still unconvinced that he was awake and lucid.

"Why are you in New York, Helen? Come to gloat that Nikola Tesla is a walking disaster, just like you used to say back in Oxford?"

She frowned at him. "That's a bit harsh, Niko. I only ever said that you were a walking disaster to my wardrobe. Your experiments are hell on sateen and lace."

His eyes flickered over the tight black blouse and loose trousers that she wore. This vision was so completely, sinfully different than the blonde Helen Magnus that was real. There was no way she could have walked through the lobby of the Waldorf in such an ensemble – he would have heard the commotion a block away. "There's a lot less wardrobe to destroy at the moment, Helen. Don't tempt me. That fabric looks easily shredable and we are very alone." He let his talons and teeth appear, though he winced at the ache remaining in his hand. Surprisingly, the pain did nothing to dissolve this dark temptress.

"That was a terrible pick up line. You are lucky that I missed you so much." She lifted her hands to the buttons of her shirt, opening the top button. His mouth fell open in anticipation just as she laughed softly and spoke again. "You are an idiot, Nikola Tesla. But I love you."

Pain spiked through his skull, like that hangover from three days of drinking cheap wine in Graz. But with the pain came memories…precious, precious memories of skin and laughter, the taste of her on his tongue, the intimacy of tracing his mind with her, organizing pathways of memory until he'd learned to lock away his Helen, his miracle who walked through time itself.

He closed the distance between them before she'd unfastened the last button, his arms pulling her close, his lips pressing against hers, aching with need. He backed them up slowly, until they were embraced by the shadows, the wall of a ventilation shaft at her back as she nipped at his lips, her hands buried in his hair. He'd been lonely, aching for this, and he'd not understood why. This was his Helen. His fingers stroked over the scar on the back of her neck and she shivered, her hips rocking against him. He tore away from her lips, pressing his face against her neck and inhaling the scent of her – her blood, her sweat, her need of him.

"Five years, Helen," he whispered against the skin under her ear as he fought to keep himself human. "Five years since you taught me how to love you properly. I'd say it's time for a refresher course."

He dropped to his knees, long fingers running over the mysterious trousers of hers to discover how to get them off of her. Impatient, he used his talons and dismissed her protestations over his destruction of her clothes and sliced at the waistband, growling in pleasure as her trousers fell to her ankles, revealing bloomers so small and sheer that he could see her dark gold curls through the fabric. He felt a tiny twinge of regret as he sliced through those luscious undergarments, but when she was bare to him and he could plunge his nose in to her mound, inhaling the rich, complex scent of her, any sacrifice was worth it.

His tongue darted out to tap against her clit and she gasped out a quick, hard breath around the ghost of his name. He savored the sound, knowing that soon enough she would be holding in her screams. His stroked in his tongue against her, long and hard from the bottom of her slit to the aching, throbbing top. Then he dove inside, seeking the font of her flavor, the sweet, musky proof of her need.

Her hands played havoc with his slicked back hair, her nails scraping roughly at his scalp and he loved every second of it. She came with a muffled yell and he smiled against her flesh, pushing down his inner monster long enough to risk pushing two, then three fingers inside of her. He undid his trousers with the other hand, freeing his cock from painful confinement even as he determinedly worked her over, focused on every sigh and whimper and gasp. She hooked a leg around his shoulder and relaxed into the wall, letting him play her like a fine instrument, giving in to the idea that he was going to take his fill of her before giving her any chance to worship him – call it his revenge for keeping their memories when he could not.

After three climaxes she was crying, begging for him, and his cock was hard enough to drive nails into the stone tiles under his knees. He stood and she kicked at the ruins of her trousers, wrapping her legs around his hips, titling her pelvis to the perfect angle that when he surged inside of her he went deep, so perfectly, brilliantly deep that he cried out, his voice frightening the last of the pigeons from the rooftop.

She laughed in his ear then sucked the lobe into her mouth. The heels of her boots dug into his back as he clutched at her hips. He was suddenly completely out of control, running, galloping, thrusting harder and harder toward the bright sparks flashing behind his eyes. She was tightness and heat and welcome and deliverance and he was found and lost inside of her. He came as she convulsed around him, her hips swiveling circles writing their impossible story in a language only the heavens understood.

He collapsed into her as they slid down the wall, ending with him on his knees in an inelegant heap on the ground, tangled and sweaty. He was appalled by the dirt, but couldn't bring himself to move. He was still half-hard inside of her, still throbbing, and her soft kisses against his neck, his temple, his eyelids did little to convince him they needed to move.

"Five years, Helen. You said it would be a century. More than a century before we could be together completely. You told me James said to use this failsafe rarely, that each time would create more risks for the timestream."

She sighed, her sweet breath ruffling the hair stuck to his forehead. He drew back, his hips shifting and making them both gasp softly at the sensation of still being locked together. Her feet fell to the ground and she pushed up, separating them, though this had not ben what he wanted. But he saw the sense in it. The next time would be in a bath, and the time after than in a bed. Or at least on a much cleaner floor than the one beneath them now.

She stood on shaky legs and took a few steps, hindered by the ruins of her clothing. She crouched over the duffle bag, extracting a familiar looking box while he tried to concentrate on her hands and not the delicious looking curve of her ass and the welcoming wetness between her thighs.

She turned to him and stood, large black box humming away, her hands stoking it as though she was stroking a child.

Oh.

He used the wall to stand, one hand keeping his own trousers from falling around his ankles. "Is that…which…is that…"

"Ash…" she stopped cold, swallowing thickly. "My first fetus is safe with the younger me, no doubt high up on a shelf where she…it will be safe for years to come. This…this is another…happier accident. Our happy accident."

He had known it existed, this child created out of time. He'd even dreamt of her, a little girl with Helen's smile and his grey-blue eyes. Part of him and part of Helen that had already come to be and was yet to be created. Even his brilliant mind boggled at the intricacies of probability and impossibility that clashed inside that stasis chamber.

"You knocked me out cold in Ninety Eight for the plans for that. And I can't think of a more noble reason that I have ever been made unconscious and my memories sealed shut. I presume that the transfer was successful?"

She bit her lip. "James had experience, after all. So yes, the transfer was successful. But it's been over a decade, and I'm afraid that even with James and I following your plans to the letter, something seems off. Some of the gauges are in the yellow. I didn't want to risk…"

He surged forward, his hands gently taking the stasis chamber from her hands, his eyes eating up every detail of the reading displayed on the dials. An eleven week old fetus, frozen to await implantation at a time more convenient and hopeful for her time traveling mother and memory-locked father.

"How long do I have with the two of you, Helen? I presume it is not yet time to rescue this little one from her imprisonment."

"I think of it as safekeeping. You won't wish to imprison her until she is in her adolescence and first discovers an interest in sex."

He looked at her, eyes piercing, hands unconsciously caressing the box just as Helen's had done.

She sighed. "In six months, I will send you a wire telling you I plan on finally visiting New York. You sprint out on the first steamer to England and escort me back here on the largest ship ever built."

"The Titanic? Splendid. I would love to get a look at her engines." Six months was too short. Far too short. Not when he didn't know when he'd have her again.

Helen blew out a slow breath, her eyes holding a century of pain she couldn't undo. "We will have to make sure you keep up with your daily swimming regime, Nikola. That's all I'm going to say on the matter."

He grew pale, thinking of the implications. Thinking that he would have these memories taken from him. Thinking that he should just stop thinking of a future he couldn't change and worry about getting Helen down to his rooms, into his bath, and how to keep her there as long as possible.

Helen pulled on her long coat, kicking off her trousers and those delicious underthings and leaving them in a sad pile of fabric. He caught of flash of a curve of a breast before she buttoned up – making him realize that he'd yet to worship those properly, making his cock harden in seconds.

She looked down at him and giggled softly, a charming sound from this hard looking woman. He grinned at her, shrugging his shoulders.

"Let's go to your rooms, Niko." Shaking her head, she took the box out of his hands, letting him fasten his trousers uncomfortably over his swollen equipment.

"Don't we make the pair, Helen. Sneaking through the Waldorf, intent on mischief."

"I don't think saving our offspring is exactly mischief, Nikola."

He slung her bag over his shoulder, easing his arm through her elbow and guiding her to the access door least likely to be patrolled by hotel staff. "The mischief comes afterwards, Helen. I'm certain we'll bring complaints with the noise we make, and we shall have to move within days. You are worth it though, ljubavi."

She leaned over and kissed his cheek, a gentle sign of affection that made his heart thump oddly. "I missed you, Niko. I missed you so much."

"I missed you too, my Helen. I didn't know it, but I missed you with every breath."

_* From Wikipedia: While experimenting with mechanical oscillators at his Houston Street lab, Tesla allegedly generated a resonance of several buildings. As the speed grew, it is said that the machine oscillated at the resonance frequency of his own building and, belatedly realizing the danger, he was forced to use a sledge hammer to terminate the experiment, just as the police arrived._


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sixth Time, and the First Time

**The Sixth Time**

**Columbia, 2009**

Nikola Tesla was surrounded by steam in his suite in the Hotel Charleston in Bogota, showering after returning from his swim in their pool. He was lost in thought at he scrubbed hard at his skin, as though he was trying to wash away his mortality, his vulnerability. He was unprepared for the idea of dying, not when he still felt he had so much to do. Not when Helen wasn’t yet his. She wasn’t, was she? 

His dreams of her were incredibly vivid, with intimate, almost comfortable knowledge of her body and blood that he could never have guessed, despite the few times they’d fooled around in the distant past. The idea of her consumed him, his blood heating at her nearness, his cock always half hard. He’d had to run away, especially as his control over his body was pathetic as a mortal. He was afraid he would crawl into her bed and beg her to let him touch her, let him hold her, let him hear her moan his name before he was old and wretched and wrinkled.

He looked down in disgust as his cock was once again achingly hard at the thought of her. A cold shower was an option, but he knew that wouldn’t work for long. He took himself in hand, calling up a vivid fantasy of taking her in a private bath in Turkey, her body warm and wet and welcoming. He stroked himself, eyes clenched shut, so lost in thoughts of Helen that he didn’t notice the door of the bathroom open softly, causing steam to swirl in playful clouds. When the sagging shower curtain was pulled back his eyes flew open, adrenaline rushing through his system. Then a naked Helen Magnus stepped into the stall, and his mouth opened in shock as he stepped backward, running into the cool tile wall.

He babbled, because he could think of no other response. “That’s it, I’ve gone mad. I may dream of you, and have more fantasies than a desperate youth of fifteen, but I have never had hallucinations before.”

Helen smiled, stepping closer to him, one hand tracing over the shell of his ear and the other hand wrapping around his cock as her heavy breasts pressed against his chest. “Are you so sure you are hallucinating, Nikola? Is it not possible that I’ve just broken down and chased you halfway across the planet to finally break the sexual tension between us?”

“If I believed that, I would be an idiot.”

She leaned back and looked into his eyes, something amazing hiding inside of her own. “You are an idiot, Nikola Tesla. But I love you.”

Pain rocketed through his skull, flashes of a twenty-five thousand days and nights with Helen Magnus at his side. She stroked his cock softly and nuzzled into his neck as he gripped her hips tightly. Two months without his wife, without even the memories he’d made with her, had drained him. They’d seen James die, he’d seen her lose Ashley, he’d been made mortal and all the time unable to give or take comfort in her. He found his eyes filled with tears as he tried to parse through everything once again.

“Ashley, is she…”

“She’s recovering well, with Danny’s help. River was perfect. Broke into the Sanctuary, planted your device, hopped through time, then collected the device again and broke back out. There wasn’t even a flicker on the Sanctuary monitors, something we will have to rectify in the New Sanctuary. Our daughter finally got to meet her sister, something she’s been taking about for forty years.” 

He smiled into her hair, proud of both of his children. Daniel the solemn, intense doctor, a mix of both grandfathers. River the brilliant and wild physicist. Both of them abnormal – Daniel the vampire and River an utterly unique specimen. With the right equipment and energy boost, she could hop through time, her wild golden-red curls her only clothing when she arrived. He remembered with amusement the first time he’d seen River, a naked little six year old in Helen and his bedroom, yelling at Mommy and Daddy that it was almost past time to implant her and she needed to be born soon! Later they would discover that little jaunt had blown out the Cardiff power grid for two days in 1954.

Helen laughed softly, as though she could read his mind, and tilted her face up for a kiss. Her grip on his cock grew stronger and all thought of their children fled, replaced by contemplation of the activity that makes children. Their kiss grew fierce, possessive, teeth and tongues, her hands buried in his wet hair and his still clutching her hips. He spun them about, pressing her against the wet tile. Her leg came up to circle his thigh, leaving her wet slit open and begging for him to thrust inside. His fingers moved to stroke through that wetness, two fingers pushing inside. His cock throbbed at the hot silky feeling of her. He removed his nimble fingers, ignoring her soft whimper of disappointment. Instead he moved them up again, circling over her clit and she growled, pulling at is cock until he was aligned with her entrance, circling her hips. “Now, missed you! Now!”

He wanted to obey, but he was mortal now and unsure of his strength to lift her up against the tile and take her properly. It would be a sad reunion indeed if they managed to fall in the shower and he died from a head wound. He pulled away, ignoring her cry of protest and spun her around to face the the wall as his hands pulled her hips back and positioned his cock. He took a moment to admire the beautiful curve of her back and the perfect roundness of her rear. She wriggled slightly, and he didn’t wait any longer, pressing into her heat and relishing the squeak of surprise she gave that turned into an appreciative moan. Helen was loud and filthy when they made love, something he adored about her. Her gasps and commands, her swearing and the constant refrain of, “Fuck me, Nikola. Jebi me!”

It was the Serbian at the end that drove him absolutely over the edge, his hips pistoning into her until she was shaking with the force of it, her arms pushing against the slippery tile to meet every thrust. He continued to drive into her as one hand moved up to pinch her nipples and the other unerringly found her clit, flicking it in counterpoint to his thrusts until she shouted his name and slammed her hand against the tile. Her sheath clamped down hard, pulling his orgasm from him as he roared. He leaned forward and bit down against the scar on the back of her neck. Even with human teeth, the action was primal, instinctual and she convulsed around him again as her pleasure rekindled with his bite.

They stayed there for a long minute, panting and spent, the water trickling over them until he reached down to shut it off. Then, without a word, Helen grabbed his hand and pulled it over her lower abdomen, pressing his hand there with intent. He gasped softly in understanding, and called upon his newly manifested magnetic powers to take an image of what was hidden within his wife. And there, not even an inch long, was a fetus – their third child together.

“Apparently, I continue to have terrible timing with regards to my conceptions.”

Worry swirled in his gut, but his response was flippant. “Well Daniel was conventional at least. He always is a bit of a perfectionist. River – I still can’t believe James managed to build that stasis box from the sketchy plans you swiped from me.”

“Yes, well, Daniel is the one who will be doing the transfer operation this time. River wanted to try and go back to interrupt our last tryst before I left you at Bhallassam, but I couldn’t bear it. I want this one too. But, I can’t carry this child now, Nikola. Not with everything I will need to do. I know you aren’t actually going mucking about those caves in the north for another couple of months at least, because that’s when I rescue you. This gives us time to build a stasis chamber and keep this little one safe, until we can be home together again.”

He pressed a kiss against her shoulder and watched with magnetic senses as this little inconvenient miracle fluttered safe within Helen’s womb. He wondered if he would dream of this little one as well, when his memories were once again locked away.

 

**The First Time**

**New York, 1906**

 

He was thrilled at his success, the press was eating out of his hand. Bladeless turbines* would conquer the world, making power so cheaply that progress would be advanced by centuries in just the next decade. He’d crush Edison and make himself so rich that the press would never question his sanity again! He slammed open the door to Room 327 at the Waldorf and entered the sitting room, intent on drinking two or three very good bottles of wine he’d swiped from J.P. Morgan at the last house party at which he’d been barely tolerated.

He was not prepared to see Helen Magnus laid out on his chaise-longue, her feet bare, her smile welcoming, already sipping at an excellent bottle of Burgundy out of a crystal glass held between her delicate fingers.

He stopped cold, blinking for a moment. Perhaps he really needed to get more sleep.

“Happy birthday, Nikola. You look good for fifty.” Helen pushed dark curls over her shoulder and took another sip of her wine, her eyes raking over him with undisguised hunger that made him certain that she was more vision that reality. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to care. Why he would imagine her with long dark hair – a look that suited her beautifully, he didn’t know. He dreamed of her that way sometimes, stealing into his mind with desperation in her eyes and a searing kiss left on his lips. What does one say to a figment of their imagination?

“I had imagined having a celebration of my accomplishments and the anniversary of my birth, but this is more reward than I had ever dreamed. Have you come to bake me a cake and worship me for the genius I am, Helen? Or am I simply hallucinating?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “You are an idiot, Nikola Tesla. But I love you.”

He sucked in a breath, his body electrified in an entirely different way than usual by her words. He stepped forward, knelt in front of her, and lifted one of her hands to his lips, pressing a kiss against warm flesh that seemed very real. “Tell me truly Helen, am I dreaming?”

She laughed softly, and setting down her wine she ran her fingers through his hair, curving behind his ear in a gesture of affection that was more profound that the most passionate kiss. 

“I need your help, Nikola. But in order for you to help me you are going to have to train yourself to forget I was ever here. If you can’t agree to do that, then I have to leave, and you will most likely think this encounter is nothing but some dream wrought by exhaustion or cheap wine.” He snorted and made to speak, but she pressed a finger against his lips. “If you can agree to undergo training to forget that I was ever here, then I will tell you things that will make you shake in your shoes and long for a time when you did not know even know Helen Magnus.”

He stared at her, her blue eyes so deep, having seen so much. She was far, far different that the blonde Helen he’d left in London, still mourning all that had been with Druitt. He realized that he had seen her before. He remembered it now, as clearly as any other of his memories. The dark leather clothes she’d worn. Her demands for plans of the stasis box he’d built for her fetus. The hunger in her eyes that he’d never seen before.

She had come to him in 1898, and stolen something from him. That he could forgive. But then she’d stolen his memory, and that…that was a different story. . Why would she need another stasis box? For whom? Rage bubbled up, threatening the control he fought for constantly. A thousand reasons she would have done that, and few of them were good 

“Did the transfer work last time Helen? Does someone else have a baby in a box now? Or are two gathering dust on your shelf together? Do you need me to fix something else for you?” Anger simmered under his skin, anger than she’d stolen his memories. He hadn’t seen Helen Magnus in fifteen years, even if he wrote to her every week. He loved Helen so much that he couldn’t stay in the same country and not try to woo her – and she was too damaged to be wooed. He could wait. They had eternity. But this…this was fracturing his emotions at the seams. “Will you simply erase my mind again whenever you need me? Who are you, Helen? What have you become?”

She pulled her other hand out from behind a cushion, revealing some kind of gun-like device that she clutched with shaking fingers. “This…James built this. It triggers a neural cascade that traps ten minutes of short term memory, sealing it away with a code phrase chosen by someone near the target. I never wanted to do that to you, Nikola. But I had no choice. I was under a time limit, and we didn’t have time for the full training.” 

Her blue eyes shone with vulnerability he hadn’t seen since when they’d first met, combined   
with a lifetime of loneliness. He felt his anger draining away as she continued, her voice trembling slightly, “I vow I will never, ever use that on you again. Time stream be damned.” She stood abruptly and dropped the gun with a thud. Tears in her eyes, she made to dart around him. 

He wrapped his arms around her knees, burying his face in burgundy fabric of her dress. He didn’t care what the hell she’d done to him. She couldn’t leave him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just a stupid, jealous fool. I will take your training, ljubavi.” He looked up into her face, pale and perfect in the soft lamplight. “I love you. My eternity is yours. If you need me, I will be there. Whenever, wherever. I’m yours. Just tell me your damn secrets.”

She let out a sob and sank down, holding his face in her hands and pressing her mouth to his. He opened his lips in surprise, and she darted her tongue out to taste his mouth. He was inexpert, lost in the arts of love. There had only ever been one woman who had inspired a physical passion in him, and other than some experimental touches on women who seemed eager to be seduced by Nikola Tesla, he was untested. He learned quickly, kissing her back with eager passion, his tongue sliding along hers, relishing the taste of her. His cock grew hard against her stomach, and his hands began to roam down her back, stroking the silky fabric and feeling warm skin underneath. 

He realized something startling in very short order and smiled into her kiss. He pulled away from her lips a millimeter, just enough to quip, “No corset, Helen? Just what kind of a man do you take me for? Entering my rooms, drinking my wine, wearing scandalously few undergarments. A man would think you had seduction on your mind.” He leaned in to continue their kiss, but she leaned back herself, a twinkle in her eyes.

“And I thought your constant string of innuendo was only a facet of your twenty-first century persona!”

The implications of that statement hit him hard, and he swallowed. “You are from the future. Our future. Together?” He licked the corner of his lips, unconsciously chasing her taste in his nervousness. “The child….the stasis box…”

She pursed her lips in amusement. “Yes. Ours. It takes me a very long time to get my head on straight I’m afraid. And then you went and disappeared on me. And then I had to jump through a rip in time, discovering I was pregnant only when stranded in 1898. I did not want to deprive you of seeing your own child grow up if you chose to do so.” Her voice trailed off, suddenly shaded with insecurity. 

He wrapped him arms around her, his eyes meeting hers with soul bared. “Thank you. I want to know our children as they grow inside of you. I want them to pester me with a thousand questions about why the sky is blue or why direct current is inferior or why their mother won’t give them another biscuit. I want all of it.”

She smiled like the sun, her face radiant, her eyes glimmering with hope and shinning with tears. “I’ve already told you far too much. Please, you will agree to the memory training? Even if you lose months of your life to confusion and false memory implants?”

“I’ve lost months of my life to the gambling table, to ditch digging, to wine, to Thomas Asshole Edison. I would lose decades, for you Helen. Centuries.” She pushed herself up, sitting back on the chaise with a thump and pulling him forward until he was pressed against her as she opened her mouth to him , pressing her tongue against his lips and tempting him to taste her again. Long, glorious minutes were spent happily engaged, as slowly his cravat was loosened, his waistcoat buttons plucked open and his shirtwaist yanked from his trousers. 

She pulled away from him, lips swollen and eyes soft and full of laughter. “You always wear too many clothes, Nikola. And that mustache!” She leaned back on to the slanted back of the chaise, her dark hair fanning out against the gold damask fabric. She rubbed her upper lip, twitching in a manner so utterly charming that his heart faltered in its elevated rhythm. “It tickles terribly. Very distracting. Especially during certain activities.”

His mind spun, thinking of all the things he wanted to do to her. Depraved, wicked things that had chased him out of London and across and ocean to escape the temptation of her nearness. 

“I shall shave it tonight.”

Her laughter rang out again, lightening his heart from a burden he hadn’t known he carried. “I’ll help you. The next time the younger me sees you, you are clean shaven, and I remember quite enjoying the difference.”

He leaned down to her, the warmth of her body under his and the promises in her eyes heating his blood to fever hot. He pressed his lips to hers again, before pulling back just enough to look in her eyes again.

“How long can we have together, ljubavi? How long before you disappear on me again?”

She closed her eyes, unwilling to show him what he knew must be bone deep loneliness. He could feel it, for it reflected his own without her. “In eighteen months, I will send you a telegraph and ship tickets and ask you to meet me in Vienna,” she said ‘Vienna’ with such a caressing tone that he was certain it was a time he was going to enjoy. Then he couldn’t think any more, as she cupped the back of his head and drew him down to her lips, kissing him with a raw need that thrilled him so much he had to work to keep the vampire at bay. One arm held him perched above her, and the other hand slid behind her head, tangled in the sweet smelling strands of her hair. His mind was caught up in the movements of lips and tongues, and even teeth – a dangerous game that thrilled him as she pulled his lower lip between her teeth and his hips rocked against her thigh, his cock hard and aching. 

He barely noticed when his fingers drifted down the back of her neck, stroked over the raised skin of a scar there, in the flesh where the back of her neck met the back of her shoulder. It was a scar he knew Helen had not possessed the last time he’d set eyes on her, admiring the arch of her neck as she worked on some project or other, a blonde curl resting against porcelain skin. He traced it absentmindedly, trying not to rut like an animal against her legs, and she shivered under him, moaned as a nail scraped against the scar.

He pulled back, studying her face as he repeated the action, watching her face flush, her eyes dilate to become more black than blue, her body trembling. She turned her head, revealing more of the left side of her neck, and he realized it wasn’t just any scar. It was the marks from teeth. Vampire teeth. His teeth. 

Those wicked teeth appeared without him willing it, his talons tracing her skin with odd gentleness. “Mine.” There was no question in his voice, just the layered tones of his ancestors and the sudden primal knowledge that yes, this was his woman. His mate.

She arched her neck against his touches, his voice making her purr in response. “Yours.”

He banished his teeth and claws and pulled back, yanking her legs onto the chaise and planting his knees on either side of her legs, laying with his body completely over hers as he kissed her again, desperate to be one with her. Her hips rolled up, pressing against his throbbing cock and he shuddered in response, his lips moving to her jaw, her tempting neck. 

His hand cupped over her breast, pressing softly, terrified of hurting her.  
“I want you so badly I think I may just combust. I want to give you pleasure, Helen. But I have no idea what the hell I am doing, ljubavi. Teach me how to please you?” He looked down at her, expecting to see amusement and perhaps a touch of dismay.

She stared back at him, a touch of awe in her expression, her bruised lips parted. “You….you, all those years I thought…I taught you?” She grinned, “I must do an excellent job. You are the most remarkable lover I’ve ever known.”

He growled, pushing her back into the cushions, his hips pressed against hers, his hands learning her shape. She pushed back, rolling him over, trapping one of his arms beneath them and throwing a leg over his thighs, the action causing her skirt to hike up, up revealing that leg up to her knee. He immediately took advantage, stroking over her ankle, her calf, drifting higher as he mapped every inch to sense memory. His mind may have to forget her, but he knew his body wouldn’t.

Her hands were even busier, unclipping his braces, working the fastenings of his trousers as he was consumed with the feel of her skin under his palm. When she wrapped a hand around his cock he let out a yell in response, and she gripped him harder as she chuckled into his neck. He clenched his eyes shut, his hand gripping her knee as his cock wept at her touch, his balls already tightening, threatening to explode at her slightest movement.

He grit his teeth and bit out, “Helen, if you expect this to go much farther, you are going to have to stop what you are doing, no matter how delightful it is.”

“Nonsense, Niko. You are far too worked up and of no use to me like this. Let me give you this, and then we’ll see about starting your lessons.” He could feel her grin against his neck, and he gave up, closing his eyes and letting her take control. Her hand stroked against him, her thumb circling, spreading drops of pearly semen as they leaked from him. Her strokes grew faster, surer, and when she bit the skin of his neck with her little human teeth his back arched, his blood pounded, and he came, streaks of white against the peach skin of her hand and the burgundy fabric on her stomach. He panted hard as she rose up over him, and he watched, shocked and intrigued as she licked her fingers of his essence. Her smile was positively filthy, and he could feel years of guilt begin to flake away, replaced by the very real possibility that her mind was just as deliciously depraved as his own.

He had confirmation when she suddenly stood, and pulled the silk over her head, revealing the unlikely but incredibly arousing truth that she wore absolutely nothing underneath that dress but her creamy skin. He stared at her, his eyes eating every inch of her skin, lips parted in shock, his cock filling with inhuman speed. She glanced down at him and chuckled.

“I did want to wish you a happy birthday, Nikola. That’s why I’m here.” She climbed over him, settling on his thighs, his cock brushing against her stomach as she leaned over him. “Apparently I also have to train you to please me. And perhaps I have a few questions about those bladeless turbines and their use with geothermal vents for power supply of an underground facility. It’s going to be a busy year and a half, my love.” 

She was perfection, everything he could ask for in a woman. He opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out. He watched as she rose above him, his own dark goddess, and in a moment she had gripped him again, aligning his cock as she slid down, slowly, her face tight with concentration. Hot, wet heaven tightened around him and his hands finally moved, gripping her hips to keep her from moving and driving him once again over the edge embarrassingly quickly. His hand move to touch where they were joined, his mind lost in a cloud of awe. Somewhere he recalled something from a book he’d read years ago, when he’d first thought of courting her. His thumb moved up slightly, finding a hard nub of protruding flesh. He pressed lightly and she gasped, rolling her hips and making him groan as her walls slid over his cock and pleasure spiked up his spine.

She leaned forward, trapping his hand against her hot flesh, her hands busy working at ripping open his shirtwaist and getting to his skin. “Maybe some of that future prowess is simply instinct, Nikola. Care to continue your investigations? That, my love, is my clitoris. You are going to become great friends with it.”

He circled thumb and fingers as best he could, pinching that magic flesh and watching the skin of her throat move as she swallowed and gasped. She pushed up on his chest and rocked backward, her movements pushing his cock even more deeply inside of her. 

He was very, very worried that he was going to come again, when a horrible thought blossomed in his mind. “Baby?” He squeaked. “Not…still one in the box…not yet…”

She stopped moving, but continued smiling with feline satisfaction as his fingers kept stroking her, as though his hand and mind were completely disconnected. “I ovulate rarely now – the benefits of great age. But I have taken precautions. I do appreciate you asking though. Very caring of you, my dear.” She tightened internal muscles and he whimpered at the feel of her.

Desperately hopeful, he brought the other hand up to hold on of her heavy breasts in his hand, his thumb flicking against the tight point of her nipple just as the other thumb stroked her nub below.

“Nikola!” she cried out softly, her hips rising and falling again, and he smirked in victory.

“You are a very quick study. Now, plant your feet and arch your hips, and give me a ride, Niko. Take what you want. That’s what will please me right now, my love.”

He did as she instructed, planting his feet on the end of the chaise and arching up, driving into her heat as his fingers continued to dance. Somehow, she kept her seat atop him, powerful thighs gripping his hips as they both rode into a blistering climax. Their shouts echoed in the sitting room, and there was a great banging objection from the floor above as she collapsed against him, both of them panting for breath, sweat beading their brows. The sounds of their mingled laughter were a sweet melody that would be repeated many times in the coming months. 

_*On his 50th birthday in 1906, Tesla demonstrated his 200 horsepower (150 kilowatts) 16,000 rpm bladeless turbine._


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Seventh Time and the Fourth Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Chartreusian for her beta work!
> 
> But all mistakes are mine, mine, mine!

**The Seventh Time**

**Old City, 2010**

Nikola strode back and forth in his room, barefoot, shirt half-unbuttoned, vest and cravat long ago discarded. He wanted to tear the place apart, wishing for the three thousandth time for teeth and claws to shred at least the curtains in his frustration. She was dying. Helen Magnus, immortal leader of the Sanctuary Network, love of his life, would rather die than give that damn Praxian map to the cockroach. 

He knew that’s what Adam wanted, knew Adam wouldn’t commit suicide again. The answer was in Hollow Earth, and Helen would never let Adam get there. She wouldn’t risk the safety of that world in the hands of a madman. But Nikola didn’t care about that – Praxis could damn well take care of itself. Nikola knew he was a selfish ass at the best of times, but nothing, nothing was worth her dying.

He had plans. Not the world domination bit, that would have to wait until he figured out how to make himself a vampire again. No, he had plans about Helen Magnus. Plans beyond the occasional tryst. He’d held her in his arms for a long night after Ashley’s death, letting her cry silently into his shoulder – knowing that she needed someone, anyone, and he would rather it be him here than Druitt. And he’d let her seduce him into seducing her amid the glory of the Praxian map. And in the elevator. And in the blasted shower before she kicked out of her rooms. He wanted more. 

Someday. Someday she would be whole again, forgive him for leaving her for so damn long in his cowardice, and he would prove to her that he would love her better than anyone else ever could. That she would be safe loving him. That he would spend hours stroking her skin, making her cry out in pleasure, kissing her until they both were breathless. In short, he was an emotional sap with a hidden kink for romance. He also wanted to fuck her into a wall until she screamed his name in bliss and left bloody scratches down his back, so perhaps he wasn’t entirely a pathetic lump full of romantic drivel. Romance was a dangerous thing, after all. Johnny-boy was full of Shakespearean sonnets and pink roses, and then came the insanity and the dead whores. 

Helen had been beating herself up over John Druitt for more than a century. And the bugger was still hanging around like a bad penny, the guilt from him eating her from inside out. She was willing to die now, because she never let herself open up to anyone else – not even James, not really. Only Ashley, and Ashley was dead.

But Helen couldn’t die. Not without, not before…no, she just couldn’t die. He had to figure out something…

Into this seething pit of frustration, the woman in question walked, strolling in through his supposedly locked door as though she owned the place…well, she did own the place. 

“Helen! What the…you need to rest, god damn it. If you are going to insist on giving up and dying before mortal me, at least try to put it off as long as possible and give me a chance to rescue you.”

She smiled at him and locked the door behind her, still silent. She walked past him close enough that the bottom of her knee-length dress brushed his trousers. She turned and sat, on his bed of all places, bringing far too many fantasies and dreams to life in front of his eyes. He took in her form, her soft green dress, dark curls, bright blue eyes and wide, welcoming smile. He cocked his head, confused. “What are you doing here, Helen? You said you won’t let me go on the mission, even though I know I could find something to keep you alive!”

He couldn’t mask his worry, couldn’t hide his adoration of her behind his usual quips and leering. He fell to his knees in front of her, “Forget everything else, Helen. You are my priority. No matter what the temptations of Praxian technology, I will lie, cheat and kill if I need to, but I won’t come back without…”

She pressed a finger to his lips, that Mona Lisa smile still on her lips. “You are an idiot, Nikola Tesla. But I love you.” 

Oh, the pain. You think he’d get used to the agony of it. Helen claimed childbirth had to be worse, but he’d much rather push a watermelon out of a hole the size of a cherry than have half of his life shoved back into his head in a matter of seconds. He blinked up at her from her lap. She’d cradled his head against her thigh, her hands swirling softly through his hair as he fought to get his breathing back to normal.

“I swear this hurts worse as a mortal than it does as a vampire.”

“It probably does. You won’t have to worry about that the next time.”

His eyes snapped to her face, though his head throbbed at any sudden movement. “You are certain that somehow I am restored to my vampire glory? It’s not just wishful thinking?”

She laughed softly, the corners of her lips twisting into a wide smile that made his heart, and his cock, jump in response. Then he realized what else that meant.

He reached up, caressing her cheeks, looking at her shining eyes, her glowing skin. “You don’t die. You don’t. You come back in time to find me, you teach me how to love you, you bear my children. You don’t die because of some little cockroach. We still have eternity.”

“Well, I can’t promise eternity. Not yet. There’s still…”

He pressed a finger to her lips. “I know, your grand mystery, your plans to rescue us all from the evils of the surface. I know, I know. Or at least, I know now.” He scrambled on to the bed, cursing his lost vampire grace, and pulled her into his arms. He pressed kisses to her lips, her nose, the curve of her jaw. 

“You are alive. You are two hundred and seventy two years old and you are my wife.” He began to unbutton the front of her dress, pressing kisses along each bit of skin as he revealed it. 

“You,” he kissed the skin of her sternum. 

“Are,” between her breasts, inhaling the scent of her skin. 

“Not,” a kiss above her navel, 

“Going,” above her mons, near the womb that had sheltered his children.

“To,” her left thigh, against a scar from a bullet wound that was far too close for comfort.

“Die.”

He pulled away from her, spreading the fabric open and revealing that once again, she’d shown up for their reunion suitably dressed. A sheer black lace bra, no panties, very little to distract him from looking his fill. He wanted to kiss every inch of her, proof that she was alive, vital – that history was his salvation and the future was not a plain of hopelessness. He wanted to worship her.

She sat up, pushing him away from her then shrugging out of her dress and removing the bra with a sigh of pleasure. He practically salivated, wanting her tight brown-pink nipples in his mouth, her moans in his ear. He bent forward, fully prepared to capture what he wanted, but she tackled him instead, pinning him to his bed, her naked and him fully clothed.

He gave a deep laugh, “Why is it we seem to find ourselves in this position so often? Me fully clothed, and you naked on top of me?” The words he spoke sent vibrations through her from where she sat on his stomach, sending her breasts swaying enticingly. Just as he leaned up to finally capture a nipple, she slid down farther, unbuttoning his shirt as she went.

“Because this is what you need. What we need. I know what you want, Nikola. You want to spend the next few hours worshipping me. Kissing every inch of me. Politely sampling the flavor of my blood from a nick to my lips so you can assess my health. Using your fingers and tongue to drive me slowly insane before you finally give me what I want.” She’d wrestled his shirt over his shoulders, leaving his arms half trapped in fabric. He was at her mercy and he was remarkably happy at the prospect.

“Oh, you missed me, wife. Admit it, you just want to have at my body while I can’t resist.” 

She arched an eyebrow at him as she unzipped him and hooked her hand in the waistband of trousers and silk boxers alike, pulling them down and letting his hard cock spring free. She stared at it a moment, and even though she had grown very, very familiar with it over the course of a century, the hunger in her eyes made him arch his hips up slightly, his cock pulsing, reaching toward that lovely, wicked mouth of hers poised so close.

Leaving his trousers around his knees and completing his odd imprisonment, she gave in to temptation and took the head of his cock in her mouth, swirling her tongue over him to gather up his taste. He sucked in a breath, steeling himself against coming like a mere boy. Two sets of memories clashed in his mind, one where she’d never gotten up the nerve to do this for him in their few heated encounters and the thought was tantalizingly sinful, and the one where she’d done this thousands of glorious times so that he knew just exactly how she could drive him to a blisteringly bright climax and drink him down with relish. 

She slid down his length slowly, her tongue feathering against his glans, then the thick vein running down the length of him as she engulfed more and more of him. She’d learned the trick of relaxing all the muscles of her throat, and so eventually all of him, root to tip, was buried in her mouth as she sucked him, humming softly, the vibrations making his toes curl. He let out small, panting breaths, cursing the need to breath so much as a human and how close he was to erupting in her mouth. 

“Please…please Helen, I…not like…please, I need to be inside you!”

She retreated so damn slowly, letting him slide out of her mouth, a sinfully evil grin on her lips. He took the opportunity to yank himself out of his shirt and kick off his pants, leaving them both naked. She did not, however, give him the opportunity to pin her to the bed like he wished. She sat on his thighs, leaning over him and dragging her hard nipples over his stomach as she moved slowly up his body. His cock was trapped against her stomach, and it left a slippery trail on her skin as she slowly, slowly inched up as he watched her. 

He tore his eyes away from her truly fantastic chest to her face, and her eyes were black, that deep vampire black that drove him crazy. Carrying his children, one as vampire as himself, had left traces in her*, bringing out more and more of the Source blood properties. Though she did not crave blood, and didn’t have quite his speed or electrical capabilities, she was a beautiful monster when she was aroused by lust or anger.

He might be mortal now, but every instinct in him was still vampire, and he hissed at her, voice shaded deep with the trapped power that lay dormant within him. “Fuck me, ljubavi. This is what I need!”

His cock slid through her folds, her juices letting him slide into place with perfect grace. With a twitch of her hips his head was at her opening, and she slammed down on him, burying him inside so fast he bellowed with pleasure so sharp it hurt. He lay stunned, trying desperately to hold on to his sanity, and she stayed thankfully still, smiling down at him with a look in her eyes that as half sin, half salvation and all love.

Then she raked her nails down his bare chest – not as hard as if he’d been his normal, immortal self, but hard enough to raise deep red welts that he knew he’d have trouble explaining to himself once he’d locked him memories away again.

“I should keep them. I should be me for this.” He arched into her, begging for her to move. 

She cocked her head at him, swirling her hips in a circle but not giving either of them the friction they needed. “You are very much yourself, right now, Niko. Vampire or not, you are my husband and I want….”

“No…no, I mean for this mission. If I have to watch you disappear in Johnny’s arms and off to some Praxian stronghold to possibly die on me, I need to know that it will all….”

She leaned forward, pressing a kiss to his lips, the action pulling him out of her slightly while pressing him hard against her walls, her clit trapped against his pelvic bone. She wriggled against him and he thrust his tongue in her mouth, letting her take her pleasure, memorizing the taste of her. His body always remembered this, ached for it. He may perform James’ damn memory block over and over again, but it wasn’t perfect. His mind and his body searched for their connection and drove himself half mad when it couldn’t be found.

She sat back up and he slid deep inside again. “You will do things that you won’t like. You will do things I hate. And you must. Trust me. It’s your choice, it’s always been your choice. I will not take your memories from you, but the risk…”

“I risk unwinding time…making all this, all of us, disappear. I know. But God I miss you.”

Her eyes glimmered, tears filling her eyes, making them bottomless black oceans. “I miss you so much. I hate this. I hate sleeping alone. I hate playing nice with all my contacts, without your rudeness to excuse any missteps. I hate that River’s given up on her life above to help me, and Daniel’s wife is six months pregnant and you aren’t there to see it. I hate that there are no good bottles of wine hidden under your side of the bed, and that there is dust covering your lab because you won’t let anybody clean it when you aren’t there. I need you, and you have to be here, with her. I’m so jealous of my idiotic younger self I could strangle her!” She laughed, and then pushed up on strong, beautiful thighs, letting him almost come completely out of her before slamming back down, making him growl. 

Then she did it again, and again. He clutched her hips, holding on for the ride. He bent his knees and she reached back for leverage, pounding into him as he took her in, the absolutely beautiful woman that was so completely his. Her breasts bounced, sweat pooled on her brow, she was magnificent. 

Far too soon he felt his balls tighten, blue-purple sparks glimmering at the edges of his vision. He tried to move his hand, press a thumb against her clit, but she batted him away before tightening around him so hard that he came with a shout, matching her scream as she pulsed around him, milking him dry.

She went boneless, falling forward on his chest in a slow collapse. His arms came up to cradle her, one hand in her hair and another on her hip, close to where they were still joined. They stayed that way for a long, blissful time, listening to each other breathing. 

Finally, he pushed them over on to their sides, and he looked into her eyes as she turned her face to him, both smiling softly. He traced one hand down her sweat-slick back, and the other ghosted over her lower abdomen. “The transfer? All went well?”

She hummed a positive noise. “Safe and sound. Daniel’s watching over the box, and moaning over the oddness of having a sibling who will be younger than his own child.”

Nikola chuckled, pulling her closer, enjoying the feel of her skin against his own, his body storing up the sensation to get him through. Only a few months in the course of a very long life – but still it was painful. “Why now, Helen? Why release my memories again now?”

“We needed this.”

Simple, but true. “How long do we have?”

“You need to go down to the library and find the Sanctuary charter. Younger me is in no condition to make decisions about the fate of the Sanctuary.”

He grinned at her. “Always so willing to make me the bad guy, Helen. Oh, you must hate me for that. Taking your power away and handing it to…let me guess, the little protégé?” She laughs and he continues, “It must cost me the ability to visit Praxis. That and the lack of shielding…oh, I need to build you a vampire shield, don’t I?”

“You are always uninspired with your choice of names.”

“Well, at least this vampire has actually gotten to see Praxis and all her wonders. Your father rather likes me, since I gave him grandchildren after all.”

“And you like him, even if neither of you will admit it.”

He took a deep breath. “It will take me two hours to enter the trance state to induce memory lock. We have perhaps three hours left. I may be mortal, but I plan to make the most of them.” He rocked against her, his erection prodding against her thigh. “This time, I get to worship your very healthy body properly.” 

He pressed a kiss to her jaw, and began to trail kisses lower and lower, and she let out a soft moan that was far, far from a protest. Three hours was not nearly enough, but it would have to do.

 

*From Wikipedia: In humans (and perhaps in all Placentals) the most common form is fetomaternal microchimerism (also known as fetal cell microchimerism or fetal chimerism) whereby cells from a fetus pass through the placenta and establish cell lineages within the mother. Fetal cells have been documented to persist and multiply in the mother for several decades.[

**********************************  
 **The Fourth Time**

**New York, 1943**

Nikola Tesla, the white haired, aged, and thoroughly mad inventor, limped into room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel and shut the door softly. Then he spun around, blindly pulling off the infernal wig and ruffing his hands through his short dark hair. He picked up a cloth from the washbasin near the door and scrubbed at his face, hating the makeup he had to wear, the act he was forced to portray day after day. He was eighty six years old, looked thirty six, and he would always look thirty six. It was beyond frustrating that no one would give him the necessary funds to build the kind of lab he needed to redeem his good name. With just five million dollars he could provide unlimited power to the world, end this infernal war, save his reputation, and then “die” conveniently with his name famous and beloved on the lips of the world. Then no more cursed makeup and wigs. Perhaps he could even convince Helen that “someday” had arrived, and they could take up residence on a private island off the Coast of Spain and explore every inch of each other for the next century or two.

He looked up into the mirror in his tiny, shabby suite of rooms and sighed. Stage paint clung to his nose and his eyebrows were stained grey. He looked like a clown. No one was going to give him a dime, and he was living in these rooms solely because Westinghouse didn’t want the scandal of their greatest investor living penniless in the street. 

But he was not alone in the mirror. He spun about, teeth extended behind closed lips, ready to defend himself. But Helen stood there, her dark hair piled up in a bun on top of her head, her clothes black and unremarkable. Her eyes caressed his face, her expression full of worry.

“Helen? What…I thought you were back in London with….James. The war…”

He stepped toward her, wanting to touch her, wanting to confirm that unlike the hundreds of vivid dreams he had of her, the dark haired Helen that writhed beneath him in pleasure and laughed with him and kissed his cheek, this Helen was real. But his foot knocked into something on the floor and he glanced down to see a loosely wrapped object that looked unsettlingly like a dead body.

“Helen? This is not the type of gift you bring when you are visiting an old friend.”

Helen blew out an irritated breath, “We don’t have time for this.”

“Helen? Is….is this it? Is it someday?”

Her faced paled, her lips parted. “Oh, oh Nikola, I…” There was a knock at the door, and Helen dashed to open it. There was a very fit young man in the doorway, in a spotless U.S. Army uniform. “Yes Lieutenant, I know we don’t have much time. Five minutes.” She slammed the door on him.

“It’s today Nikola. Still today, I’m afraid. And today it is time to fake your death before a Nazi agent sneaks in the door and tries to strangle you to death for the secret of your bloody Death Ray….”

“Peace Ray!”

“It is not the time to delay, my love. Pack anything you find the most precious and move quickly. My sources tell me that a Mr. Stevens has an appointment to speak with you about funding this afternoon. Mr. Stevens is actually Otto Skorzeny, one of the elite body guards to Adolf Hitler. He plans to kill you.” She gestured to the body on the floor. “We will let him find you dead instead, and your safe full of useless nonsense.”

“Nonsense! My most revolutionary ideas are not…”

“Stuff it, Nikola. Your papers are safe at the New York Sanctuary. But contents of that safe are now nonsense supplied by the OSS girls who are experts in creative forgeries. Hurry up and pack, and we are going to London. We need you in the war effort.”

He stood still, watching Helen Magnus drag the covering off of the body of an old man. He bent to help lift the body, but his thoughts were untethered, swirling in confusion. This Helen was real. This was Helen Magnus, savior of abnormals, more British than afternoon tea, stiff upper lip and deadly upper cut. But she wouldn’t meet his eyes, wouldn’t welcome his touch. She wasn’t his Helen – the Helen in his dreams. The one that fit perfectly in his arms. 

The body was laid out on the bed, and he was stuffing his favorite suit, a few handkerchiefs, important letters, his favorite soldering gun and gold-tip tweezers into a valise. His mind was not on a future – life after death.

Instead, he was remembering Egypt, twenty years ago. A blonde Helen with bobbed hair, soaked in golden sun despite her parasol. Sand in uncomfortable places, a slow courtship, cuddling in the cold desert night, the scent of rosewater in the hookah, the taste of anise liquor. The excitement of discovery and the thrill of wooing Helen, despite her anger at his not talking to her for four long years prior to that. It had been a wonderful six months. But on that last night, she’d made love to him with desperation, and he’d known that she wasn’t ready. When she left in the morning, just missing the reporters descending to cover the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun, completely missing the vampire ruins not two thousand feet away which were far, far more spectacular.

She’d returned to England, and taken up with James. That had been twenty years ago, and as far as he knew they were still together. Fighting this damned war against all the evils of humanity. And now she wanted to drag him into it. He would go of course. She needed him.

Helen pulled off the bag covering the corpse’s head, and there, looking very dead, was Nikola Tesla. Nikola sucked in a breath, and Helen said, “There was an Imonari mortician who owed me a favor. This poor man died of a heart attack under a bridge in Central Park, with no one to claim him. Instead he will be buried with honors.”

“My honors,” he choked off bitterly. He stared down at the man who looked just enough like him to be useful. “I’m dead.”

Helen looked up and met his eyes for just a moment, before dropping them back to the dead man. “Nikola Tesla will never be dead to those who respect and…love him.”

She spun on her heel and walked toward the cute little lieutenant waiting at the door. Nikola looked down at this sorry version of himself and shrugged his shoulders. Maybe there was life after death afterall.

Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, UK, 1945

Hut 24 had only one window, and that looked out over the green English Countryside rather than at all the other little wooden buildings and brick hovels that made up the warren of Station X. All the strange, weird, crooked, brilliant minds of England had been gathered in this place to break Axis codes and plan devilish deceptive daring-do, and they did it in a bunch of grey walls and squeaky file cabinets, wax crayons and tepid, weak tea. And the occasional view out to a pastoral part of central England. 

Of course, his window was two-inch thick bullet, and vampire, proof glass. Nikola Tesla had been holed up in this pretty prison for almost eleven months under an impressive armed guard, ever since the betrayal of Helen’s pretty little lieutenant. Nikola barely knew that Helen and James and Nigel were still alive. He didn’t give a rat’s ass if Druitt had made it out of Normandy alive.

Now, it was V-E Day, a gloriously sunny day in May, and most of the place was celebrating wildly and falling over drunk. The war in Europe was supposed to be over, except for the messy clean up, and Japan was surely not too far behind.

Nikola knew better. He knew it would have to be a decade of fighting, inch by inch for the island of Japan. He’d spent a few years there back in ’25, and he’d seen first-hand the determination and pride, of the people, and arrogance of the Japanese government. But there were whispers that reached him, subtle suggestions from his handlers. They had him working on pretty puzzles left by Nazi and Japanese cryptographers and scientists, booby traps and unsolvable locks. But these little games weren’t enough to merit the Allies keeping him locked up like this. No, they wanted him in the coming fight against the Bolsheviks, and they wanted him to head up their nuclear division. 

“Wouldn’t it be alluring to be able to access the essential powers of the universe?” one captain had mentioned off-handedly. 

“The new world will be in atomics,” said another, “And the man in charge will have the power to determine the course of the future.”

They were trying to woo him, and oh, they made it sound good. But he wasn’t stupid. Splitting the atom was one thing that he had no desire to dabble in. Even Albert was worried about the potential horror unleashed, and he wasn’t even a vampire. Nuclear weapons that doomed his ancestors, after all…there was a reason why Siberia was a wasteland, why there were hidden abnormal mutations throughout the world. 

He knew he had to disappear. Die more convincingly, fade away into obscurity. He should have done it months ago…years ago. But he knew then he would have to say goodbye to Helen for a very long time, with no hope that she would give in, come with him, see what they could be together. She was with James. She had her calling, her Sanctuaries. She had no need of a half-breed vampire.

He took a sip of very inferior brandy that Turing had left him when Churchill had announced the “victory”. He shuddered at the dull, insipid flavor, and missed good wine. He set the glass down on his desk and turned to look out the window, hands in his pockets.  
Yes. Time to go.

The door opened, and he ignored it. There was always some Wren* or other coming and going with paperwork and demands. But then the door lock was turned, and a soft, familiar voice spoke, “Hello.”

He turned around, full prepared to fend off the advances of another eager fan, when instead he stopped, almost turned to stone by the vision before him.

Helen Magnus, or her evil twin, stood before him. She looked like any other Wren, regulation blue double-breast jacket. Dark blue skirt that hit below her knee. Ugly little hat perched at a jaunty angle. But it was her beloved face, pointed chin and wry little smile, blue eyes that studied him with guarded emotion. But her hair, platinum blonde curls so light they were almost white, cut short enough to seem like a cloud around her elfin face. She looked young, almost innocent, except for the blood red stain on her lips. That made her sex incarnate. He very nearly launched himself across the room to push her up against the door and ravish her. He could practically taste her on his tongue, both blood and sex and everything he wanted wrapped up into one brilliant, eternal package.

“Hello, Helen.” He voice was deep, almost embarrassing husky, and he could see her smile widen. “I thought you were…”

“Somewhere in eastern Europe, trying to save lives of humans and abnormals alike who were kept at death’s door in camps designed in the fiery pits of hell? Yes.”

Her nostrils flared, anger and sadness and mad determination writ in every features. She was beautiful in her rage. And he was very confused. Why was she here? Why was she with him when she had…

“And James? I’m sure he hates that hair. Though I love it.” His cock was ridiculously hard and she was still across the room. Thank God the desk was in the way, or she would get an eyeful.

Her face softened, a fond sadness quelling her anger slightly. “James did not take seeing John again very well. He is, no doubt, in the London Sanctuary, indulging in cocaine and pretty boys.”

Nikola blinked at her. She’d been with James for twenty years. Twenty years in which Nikola grew increasingly sure she had made her choice, and that he had lost her forever. “And this doesn’t make you upset?”

She walked forward, her hips rolling softly, her very non-regulation steel toed-half boots with a wicked little heel giving her a distinctive, sexy walk. He practically moaned at the sight. He took his hands out of his pockets, worried that he was about to vamp out and shred his trousers to bits, leaving her in no doubt of her affect on him.

“I will always love James, Nikola. But I’ve never been in love with James.”

Something was wrong. Helen should be equally affected by seeing John. She should be quietly furious at James. She should be ready to shoot him with one of her increasingly tiny but powerful collection of firearms for what he was thinking, for she was close enough now that the desk no longer hid the bulge of his erection, and she was very definitely looking.

“Who are you? What do you want from me?”

She eyes snapped up to his face, and she laughed. A cheerful sound, filled with real happiness. “Your body? Your brilliance? Your next six decades?” She stood right in front of him, her scent surrounding him. She was Helen Magnus, down to the dimple in her left cheek, and the heady quality of her pheromones. He could barely process her words.

“Are you some kind of shapeshifter? Come to steal years from my life?”

She placed a hand against his cheek, her eyes full of something he dare not call love. “Did I hurt you so much, Nikola? That you couldn’t believe that I would want you?” She bit her lip, determination in her eyes. “You are an idiot, Nikola Tesla. But I love you.”

Light surged behind his eyes, like a flash bulb going off a thousand times. It gave him a hell of a headache, but those memories, sweet, sexy, satisfying memories, were with the pain. This Helen was his. His partner, his lover. He staggered slightly, and she clutched at his lapel, keeping him upright as she pressed her face against his shoulder, one arm holding him tight across the back. 

“Welcome back, my love.” She kissed his neck, and he growled, pulling her away only to drag her forward, capturing her lips with demanding need. He moved them backwards, crashing her into the edge of his desk without mercy, his kiss hard enough to draw blood from her lips that he licked at greedily.

When he pulled away from her, her lips were bruised and she moaned, nails digging into the back of his neck to bring him back. His voice was deep, his teeth sharp, talons poking holes in her skirt where he clutched at her hips. “Twenty three years. Twenty three fucking years of dreaming of you so much I avoided sleeping for a decade. Twenty three years of your eyes, your goddamn ancient, secretive eyes smiling at me every time I let my concentration waver enough to daydream. Never again!”

He pulled her up on to his desk, papers scattering and the brandy glass wobbling dangerously. She stared at him, her eyes wide, pupils dilated. “The building is empty, and I’ve got targeted incendiaries set to go off in ten minutes.”

He grinned at her as he pulled up her skirt. “This won’t take long.”

She grinned back and her hands flew over the proper brass buttons on her jacket. The jacket opened revealing nothing but skin underneath, and when her skirt was pushed up to her waist, there was nothing but beautiful dark gold curls and the slick pink lips of her sex as she opened her legs.

“Oh Helen, this kind of greeting never gets old.” He retracted his claws and thrust two fingers inside of her, drinking in the sound of her moan. She arched her back, thrusting her breasts forwards and he took in the view with glee. “Tell me you’ve got a decent bottle of cabernet in whatever vehicle you’ve brought to spirit me away and you’ll have my undying loyalty forever.”

She laughed, somewhat breathlessly as he filled his mouth with her nipple and tore at the zipper of his trousers. “Thought I already had that, lover.” 

He didn’t like that title. He wanted another. He let her go with a pop, withdrew his fingers and lined up his throbbing cock. 

“Husband.” He thrust into her and she cried out, a happy little scream that made him very smug. 

“What?” she gasped out, as he began a slow rhythm, pulling out slowly almost all the way, pushing back in fast and trying not to think of the ticking of the clock and the eminent destruction of this cursed little office prison. 

“Marry me? You said six decades. I’ve got you now for a lifetime, and I’m damned serious about keeping you. Marry me?” He thrust faster and she stared up at him even as she let out panting little moans, their flesh slapping together. She was wet and hot and so tight it was almost impossible to pull out of her. He wanted to stay inside and never, ever leave. He sped up, knowing that when they got to wherever she planned on running off to, he was going to stay within her for hours, wringing climax after sweet, screaming climax out of her, torturing her for leaving him alone for twenty three years. 

“Yes!” She clutching at his shoulders, pulling him down to her, bouncing on the desk until the brandy snifter smashed on the ground, followed by an autotype machine in a nasty clatter of priceless encryption technology. He didn’t care if that agreement was to his proposal or to the pleasure that rushed through her body, he’d hold her to it. The heels of her boots pressed into his ass, her walls clamping down on his cock, her nails digging in through his suit jacket hard enough to leave rips in the fabric and bruises underneath. She was breathtaking in her climax, pleasure making her clench her eyes shut, her mouth fall open with his name whispered on her lips.

He slid a hand into those enticing white-blonde curls, knocking off the stupid little hat. He pulled, and the pressure on her scalp made her purr and turn her head, arching to show off the curve where her neck met her shoulder and the edge of the thick scar on the back of her neck that marked her as his Helen.

“Bite.” She practically grunted out the words as his hips slammed into her. “Please…bite!”

Unable and unwilling to resist, he set his teeth in her shoulder, biting as gently as he could manage with his control razor thin. She screamed beneath him, another climax causing her to squeeze him past the point of no return. The taste of her blood flooded his mouth and his balls tightened, his cum erupting into her sheath. He held her hips carefully, not wanting to cut her with talons. He licked at her wound, stopping the bleeding and then staring down at the marks he’d left. Beautiful. 

She pushed him away with a smile, before hopping off the desk on unsteady legs, wobbling as she pushed down her skirt and buttoned her coat. He smirked at her, tucking himself away, glancing around the room and realizing there was nothing they he needed. He grabbed her hand, fingers once again human. She tugged at his, smile shy, almost like a courting adolescent, they walked out the door at a brisk clip, and out into the dusk.

Three minutes later, there was a muffled boom, and Nikola looked back at Hut 24 to watch it start to burn with a fire hot enough to leave behind nothing but ashes and molten metal. 

“I’m not taking your name, you know.” Helen stated as she climbed into the drivers seat of a covered Willy’s MB. She handed him a greatcoat and a hat, which he shrugged into as he climbed into the passengers seat. She drove off in a seemingly impossible direction, straight toward a fence.

“I wouldn’t expect you too. Silly British custom. And besides, I’m dead. I don’t exactly have a name to give at the moment.”

She turned to him, completely ignoring the very solid-looking sentry fence that they were about to crash into. “You could take mine. Be Nick Bancroft.”

He laughed, trying to not brace himself for impact. He trusted that she knew what he was doing. “How horribly English, Helen.”

They drove through the wall with only a slight bump. The wall was a very good illusion. He turned in his seat to see a ground ray of some kind following their vehicle, and two burly, vaguely reptilian men welding a section of the fence back into place.

“Friends of yours?”

“I have friends in many places, as have you.” 

He snaked a hand around the giant gear shift, placing it on her knee. He wanted to run his hand up her thigh, feel the sticky wetness of his essence leaking out of her. “Where are you kidnapping me off to, dear almost-wife?”

She laughed, “That sounds dreadful Nikola. I better marry you just to keep you from coming up with increasingly odd names for me.”

“Mine. I like mine. My wife.”

“Possessive?”

“Twenty three years, Helen. I missed you.”

“I’m sorry. But I have twenty seven sanctuaries underground to show for the sacrifice. And I swear to you we will never be separated for so long again.”

“Twenty seven! My, you have been busy. Last time I had my memories you’d gotten up to nine popsicle farms.”

“Nikola! How horrid.”

“Stasis homes, then, if you want to be nice about it. But you’ve got thousands of abnormals on ice throughout the world, Helen. Well done. All safe and sound, using my energy oscillators for power. You are welcome.”

“You are insufferable, Nikola.”

“But you love me anyway.” He glanced in the back seat, seeing a very familiar looking canvas equipment bag. “And we are not staying in a tent in the forest for nostalgia’s sake. Stop the car.”

She slowed, but didn’t stop, “We’d best leave this thing anyway. Too easy to trace. We’ve enough time to get to the woods on foot before full dark and curfew.”

“No woods, Helen. We’re only forty miles from Oxford, Helen. Your father’s house….”

“Was gutted by a fire. Bombs fell on the block.” Pain flashed in her eyes, her lips a thin line. “Besides, the bloody government impounded the house on my ‘death’ in ’15. Mad that I wouldn’t help them develop weapons for that blasted war. Somebody bought the place later in an auction, and I could never get them to sell.”

He cleared his throat and she stopped the car, turned to glare at him. “Nikola? What do you know about my house. The house I was born in?”

“It was going to be a present, a wedding present I hoped. Someday.”

She softened at that word. “Well, there’s not much there left to…”

“I reinforced the basement. Made a safehouse out of it in the thirties. Anything short of a direct hit by a V1 and it should still be intact, with supplies. We could hold out for weeks there.”

She smiled, her eyes practically glowing, her cheeks blushing softly. “I’m sure I can get us up safely to Snowdonia before then. But a few days hiding would keep them from looking too hard for your escape versus your death.”

“Wales? Your grand hide out is in Wales?”

“My mother’s people, the Bancrofts have owned land near Mount Snowdon for hundreds of years. I was the last one left, and I never did another with the property the first time through. The caves underneath were a family secret I only discovered in a diary my grandfather left in a hunting lodge there. A very useful family secret.” She went to put the car in gear again, but he put a hand on hers, then turned off the engine. With full vampiric speed, he grabbed the bag of supplies she’s put into the back, leaving the damn tent. He slung it over his shoulder, then darted around the car in a blur, putting his hands under her thighs and behind her back and lifting her out of the car. She let out a tiny yelp of a scream, and he stopped, looking down at her with a smirk.

“Magnus House, 16 Druman Lane, Oxford, next stop.” 

He started to run, full out, Helen throwing her arms around his neck and grumbling out curses to make a sailor blush. He hadn’t been able to let go, use his physical powers as a vampire, for years. He would get them to Oxford in less than an hour, but he would need blood. He shivered at the thought of how to sate his hunger when they got to the little nest he’d built so long ago. There was a very fine bottle of ’98 Bordeaux that would taste very good drunk from her naval. Better from between her breasts. He expected it would be at least a week, maybe two, before they got back to the business of saving the abnormal world.

 

* The Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS; popularly and officially known as the Wrens) was the women's branch of the Royal Navy.


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ninth Time, and the Third Time

**The Ninth Time**

**New York, 2011**

This was almost his city.

 

He sat in the low damask-covered chair, legs spread wide, staring out his window on the thirty third floor and into the night. New York was laid out before him. Times Square with all the giant displays were his triumph, electricity lighting up the night almost brighter than the day. The rumble of the subway, the buildings reaching for the sky, the cutting sense of humor, sharper than a knife. The clothes may change, the buildings grow taller, and the original Waldorf-Astoria may have been mowed down to build the Empire State Building, but this new Waldorf was suitably elegant for his tastes.

He missed room 327 though. He’d had some ground-breaking ideas in that room. And he’d had dreams – dreams of Helen that would make her blush brilliant red. Even at her age. Her possibly much, much older age.

He dragged his eyes away from contemplation of Park Avenue and toward the file he had open on his laptop. It had five levels of unbreakable encryption, was not connected to any network, and after he spoke with her about it, he planned on deleting the files and frying this machine into a blackened husk.

He hadn’t seen her in six months. He had fuzzy memories of a kiss after the explosion in Africa, but his hunger must have been overpowering. He’d left her rather than risk saying and doing things that would break the comfortable truce between them. Someday might come, once she forgave him for leaving her for sixty years. Once she had healed from losing her child and seeing John again.

So, he’d found this “opportunity” at SCIU, he had an unlimited expense account and free reign. He should have been happy.

There was a knock on the door. Abrupt and efficient. Distinctive. “Come in, Helen.”

The door opened, revealing Helen Magnus like she existed in his most vivid dreams. Ruby silk shirt, black pencil skirt and leather coat. Dark hair, small smile, hunger in her eyes as she looked at him. “You look good, Nikola. Being a vampire again obviously agrees with you.”

He tried to smile confidently, with his usual smirk. But he was so angry he wasn’t sure that his performance was really convincing. “You seem to enjoy looking, Helen. Especially since it’s been more than a century since you’ve seen me.” Her mouth opened, her hands flinched. “You look very well preserved for a women who is a decade or two shy of three hundred.”

She regained her calm, her small smile growing – something he knew was dangerous. “What makes you think that, Nikola?”

“I have my sources, Helen. I know about the time rift. I’ve researched Helen Bancroft and her string of bank accounts around the world, the odd men she’s kept as lovers.” Helen chuckled at that, and he could no longer keep his anger in check. “That was the best solution you could come up with? Really? Follow that little cockroach back in time, then live more than a century on your own. You never asked me for help! Never thought I could have gotten you back to me…to the right time. It was bad enough that you refused to find me for sixty years, but then….” Helen was laughing, clutching her stomach, tears rolling down her face.

“What the hell is so funny woman!? You wasted another lifetime without me and…”

Helen gasped for breath as she wheezed out, “Do you really, truly think that I could leave you to do mischief by yourself for sixty years? You are an idiot, Nikola Tesla. But I love you!”

You think he would have gotten used to this by now, but he never could. He collapsed to his knees. A spike of pain followed by memories of a lifetime, memories that made him a slightly different man, a slightly better man. Memories of a lifetime with Helen at his side.

He coughed, then let out a growl. “Why am I still trapped in this mind with only half my memories?”

She crossed the room to pull him to his feet. She kissed his cheek, then drew back just enough to look into his eyes without any of her masks in place. “I needed someone on the inside. It was you or River.” He could see the pain and stress she tried to keep hidden from everyone else.

He captured her hand, threading their fingers together. “Me. It had to be me. I remember now.” He rose to his feet, keeping hold of her hand and pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “River wouldn’t last an hour in that place. She’d have the containment units open and be leading the resistance in an hour. Me, I’m not nearly so noble. I really, really don’t like myself at the moment, Helen. Even without my memories, I’m rather disgusted with myself.” He let go of the comfort of her hand in his, and walked over the laptop. He sent a bolt of electricity at it, watching it spark and burn with a modicum of pleasure.

Once his fit of destruction was over, he felt Helen wrap her arms around his chest, her chin tucked into his shoulder. “It’s so good to see you, my love. It’s been months since little Nick’s christening.” His heart clenched, knowing that he was missing the early months of his namesake grandson’s life because of stultifying politics.

He pounded his fist on his thigh, and Helen tightened her arms around his ribs. “I thought I would be used to it, thought I would be so busy now that things have come to a head that I could survive without you. But I don’t think I can anymore. I can’t sleep without you in the bed. I can’t enjoy the taste of wine without you there to savor it with me.”

He chuckled in response, and tilted his head to rest against hers as they both looked out the window. Questions spun through his mind and in his relaxed state, his wife at his side, they slid off his tongue far too easily. “Is Ashley responding to her treatment? How is Daniel doing as a father? And does River still have that terrible boyfriend that needs a good eviscerating now and then?”

Helen laughed, her breath tickling the hairs at the back of his neck, her breasts pressing delightfully against his back. He tried to ignore his suddenly demanding cock and listen to her answers. “From the last coded communiqué I received told me that our residents are waking up in excellent condition, the Praxians are fitting in well, and the cities are beginning to thrive. I could puzzle out between the lines that Ashley is doing remarkably well and Daniel and Mai-Lin trust her enough to baby-sit for her nephew. Daniel is worried and overjoyed and far too busy, but he will balance it all splendidly because he was trained by the best.”

Nikola grinned at this, inexorably proud of being a father and a grandfather – something he’d always thought to be unimportant until the moment he’d looked into the eyes of his first child. Speaking of the devil, “And River’s tangled love life?”

“You’d think an astrophysicist would lead a dull life trapped inside with her math and her radiotelescope images.” Helen let go of him and walked toward the bed, shrugging out of her leather coat and laying it across the coverlet. He turned to follow her with his eyes, staring at her with the appreciation of a century of knowledge for the work of art underneath her clothes. “River is helping with releasing our residents from stasis. Her Jack keeps showing up somehow, propositioning her and trying to lure her into following him into some mad scheme or another. She’s resisting for now. But the man is persistent. He travels in time. And he’s ridiculously handsome.”

He growled at that, and she turned to him with a flirtatious grin. “Sit, my dear. You look very tense.”

He wasn’t, not since his memories returned, but at least one part of him was remarkably stiff. He sat down in the chair, knowing she had something planned. “The man definitely will be receiving a good fatherly discussion the next time I catch him.” He let the talons of one hand grow for a moment before banishing them again – glad his control was that much better after receiving vampire blood straight from the source. “He recovered far too quickly from the last one.”

She leaned over him from behind, her breast pressing against the side of his face as she flicked open the buttons of his vest, and then his shirt. He turned his face into the red silk, inhaling the scent of Helen mixed with the lightest trace of jasmine – oh, she was feeling frisky tonight. She pulled all the fabric away from his chest and ran her nails up from his naval to his sternum, leaving marks that he wish didn’t disappear quite so fast. He sucked in a breath and half turned in his seat, ready to pull her down into his lap, but she spun away, kicking off her sensible little heels and sauntering to stand between his chair and the window.

He settled back in the chair, eyes drinking her in as she swayed softly to music only she could hear, undoing the buttons down that shimmering red silk top. She let it fall down her arm and pool on the floor, her hands moving to the side zipper of her skirt with slow precision. His eyes flared at the ivory lace covered corset she wore, a flexible thing far more comfortable than the monstrosities she’d had to wear when they were at Oxford, but just suggestive enough of once forbidden fantasies to make him strain uncomfortably against the restriction of his trousers.

When the skirt dropped to the floor, he saw black stockings held up by straps attached to the bottom of the corset. Her knickers were ivory silk so sheer he could see the golden curls underneath, and the evidence that she was more than ready for anything he wanted to do with her.

He grinned, kicking off his shoes while maintaining a relaxed air, when all he wanted was to spring out of his seat and push her up against the window, pressing her against the cool glass and fucking her for the world to see.

He was rewarded for his restraint when she knelt in front of his chair and quick hands unbuttoned his trousers and yanked all fabric down over his hips and past his knees. He kicked out of the garments and let her spread is knees, stroking her fingertips over his inner thighs as she looked at his cock like a hungry jaguar eyed her prey.

He arched his hips enough to make his cock bob in front of her and she took the bait, engulfing the head of him in her warm mouth, her tongue pressed against the back of his glans as two fingers circled partway around the base of his cock. He let out a groan of approval and slouched against the back of the chair, arms splayed out over the armrests as he let her have her way, resisting the urge to grip her hair and thrust deep into her throat. It was more fun to let her loose.

She sucked hard at the tip of him then swirled her tongue in an intricate dance that sent his nerves jangling pleasantly, his pleasure far too close to the surface if he wanted this to last. Her eyes caught his as she grinned around him, knowing exactly what she was doing to him, how far she could push him.

With no warning she changed tactics, taking all of him, holding her breath to take him to the root, his considerable length sliding into her throat easily after years of perfecting the maneuver. He hissed, his eyes going black and his talons and teeth making an appearance as she slid him in and out of her throat, sucking him down and humming softly. In far too short a time he was tasting his own blood as he bit his own lip, pleasure spiking high and sweet as his hips rocked and his seed spurted over her tongue. She swallowed him down happily, smug accomplishment in her eyes as he panted through the sudden exhaustion following climax, even as a vampire.

His lassitude didn’t last long however, and as she let him go to press a kiss to his thigh he banished the talons to slid his hands under her arms and haul her up to meet his kiss. His hands swept down to clutch her ass as his lips sucked at hers, his tongue chasing his flavor mixed with hers as she dueled with him. She tried to climb on his lap, grind her hips against his, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to see her, see them, together and happy for this brief, succulent moment in the midst of madness.

He pulled back from their kiss, keeping a firm hold on her hips as he grinned at her, then he nodded his head back toward the rest of the room and the lights flickered off one by one, leaving one bedside lamp illuminating Helen’s face. She chuckled, amused as always at his casual use of electrical persuasion, and he bent down, using his lips to teased out her nipple from the alluring top of her corset where it at flirted with him from its lace prison. He sucked it hard as his fingers crept from her hip to the apex of her thighs, one fingertip pressing under silk fabric and against warm skin.

With precision, he let one talon loose and the silk was shredded. Before she could protest he let go of her nipple and spun her around to face the window, his legs between hers as he spread her wide, his already hard cock nestled against the curve of her ass and just teasing her folds. He looked into the window, where he could still see the lights of Manhattan. But he could also see their reflection, just as he’d planned. Helen sat astride him, stockinged legs splayed and the slick, wet folds of her sex waiting for him. His fingers crept down to circle over her clit and she sighed breathily, meeting his eyes in the window and smiling like a pleased princess at the decadent view they made.

But she was no pampered princess. She was a queen. His queen.

Without words, she pushed her toes down into the carpet and rose up, and he took himself in hand to guide his cock to her entrance, watching their reflection and she slowly, slowly sank down on him. He kept his eyes wide open, though the pleasure spiking through him demanded he close his eyes and concentrate on the feeling of her tight and hot and perfect around his cock. He wanted to see it though, to know it wasn’t his fantasy or his memory or anything but beautiful reality. Helen was here, riding him, letting out sweet breathy pants as her breasts bobbed, both nipples now free of their confinement. Silk and lace and sweet skin and all of it his.

He’d bought her that corset, those stockings, a decade ago when they’d been comfortably ensconced beneath Old City, building the latest of their eighty one underground Sanctuaries, all mostly empty and waiting for residents to bring them to life. They’d had lazy days then to distract each other with an hour or two or five to lose themselves in each other’s pleasure, storing up enough physical memories to last through the tough times Helen knew were coming. They would have those lazy days again, someday.

Now they had mere minutes, perhaps hours, but she rode him slowly while they both watched. She slid up and down his cock with a lazy perfectionism, clenching her muscles tight as she rose off of him and making him groan at the loss of each inch of warm sheath, then slamming back down so that he pressed perfectly against that internal bundle of nerves that he knew shot pleasure through her like lightning. He let his skin buzz with the crackle of charge and on her next descent he let it spike. She screamed as he watched, every muscle contracting as she came around him, gripping him so tight that he had to move to squeeze the base of his cock to prevent himself from erupting into her.

She leaned back into him, her neck presented perfectly to his lips as she tilted her head to the side and stared at their reflection in the window. Her feet came up off the floor and he let go of his stranglehold on his cock to slide his hands under her thighs and pick her up, impaling her that much deeper and making her groan sweetly in his ear. She was breathtaking, her form sparkling with the lights of the city behind her, her position the stuff of his most lecherous dreams.

“Jebi me, Niko.”

He obeyed her command, planting his feet and rocking is hips up into her, slowly increasing his speed until he was slamming into her faster than any human male could manage, harder than any human female could take. Her watched her bounce with each stroke, breasts bobbing, sweat trickling over her skin and her juices covering him, the scent of her thick in the air.

“Bite me, love. Please!”

She bent her neck at a delicious angle, his scar on her neck flushed and red, her sweet blood rising close to the surface. He didn’t take from her often, but now it was especially dangerous. He slowed his strokes, his mind caught in a trap. The next time he saw her, if he caught a glimpse of this scar, he was not sure his memories wouldn’t force themselves through, driving him slowly mad until he could taste her again.

“I need it!” Raw desperation tinged her voice, and suddenly he couldn’t resist anymore, his fangs appearing as he bite down softly, parting her skin cleanly and then sucking on the wound, his hips starting their punishing pace again, her taste bringing him to the brink. Her nails sank into his thighs as she yelled his name in one more orgasm, and the pain of it pushed him over and with one last jerking thrust he lost control, emptying spurt after spurt into her as he sucked on her wound. She collapsed on top of him, and he licked at her wound, soothing it closed as she panted softly..

But soon, rapid breaths became soft sobs, and Nikola pulled out of her, wrapping his arms around her back and her thighs and pulling her up as he stood on shaky legs. He recovered quickly as she nuzzled into his neck, her tears staining the collar of the shirt he half-wore. He walked to the bed, setting her down gently as he shed what remained of his clothes and slowly, careful extracted her from stockings and corset, rubbing her skin with soft comforting touches and letting her cry – something she would do with no one else. He climbed on to the bed and wrapped his body around her, letting her draw a shaky breath with her nose buried against his chest.

He waited, stroking her long dark hair as she began to quiet. Finally, when she was ready, she pressed a kiss against his chest.

“You are worried, aren’t you? You are worried about your team. You’ve talked about them for a hundred years, love. They are good, I have to say, but not the perfect beings you painted them to be. Though Henry has potential, I must say. But they are good, and they knew the kind of danger they signed up for.”

She nodded. “I wish I could at least tell Henry. He knows something is different. If he wasn’t so distracted by Erica he would be able to tell something was wrong.”

“He’s a good kid. I actually enjoy working with him, and you know how rare that is. I promise I will help you look out for him. I can retain at least that much of myself when I go back under.”

“So you will…you’ll suppress your memories again.”

“I’m sorry Helen, I have to. I can’t stay at SCIU and stay sane if I know the truth.”

She shuddered against him, another round of tears leaking from her eyes as she looked up at him. “I don’t know what to do, love. I’ve known for a century what was going to happen, that you were going to be safe. That you were going to break through all my stupid denial and make me admit that I love you. But once you walked out of that hotel room in Ethiopia, nothing is certain. I can’t lose you, Nikola. I can’t lose what we’ve made together.”

He pulled her close, kissing her softly and tasting the salt of her tears. He pulled back, whispering against her lips, “You won’t lose me, Helen. Vampire, remember. You are the queen of the underground and I am your king. We have eternity. Our someday, our everyday.”

She kissed him back desperately, rolling herself on top of him and sitting astride him, determination in the set of her mouth. “That’s right, vampire. You are mine.” His cock throbbed and somehow he knew it was going to be past checkout time before she was done with him.

 

**The Third Time**

**Shoreham, Long Island, 1917**

Nikola Tesla stood in sand that was slowly working its way into his socks, and inevitably would end up in his shoes, making each step a tiny torture. It was that kind of day.

It was that kind of year.

The sky was grey and overcast, and cool for July. The wind howled in his ears, and up on the cliff his beautiful tower stood useless, standing watch towards Europe and unable to fulfill her assigned task. Wireless transmission of information and power across vast distances.

It would have been beautiful, if he’d had enough money to make it work.

Ninety four feet of steel was too tempting a target in a greedy war, and the thought of his beautiful tower becoming melted down into tank tracks and rifle barrels made his stomach roil in protest. His homeland was being ripped apart by war, and his life was a mess of poverty, failure and broken dreams.

Damn Edison. Damn Morgan. Damn Marconi. Damn the stock market. Damn everyone.

Damn Helen Magnus. He couldn’t be as ruthless as he should be. He could kill. He could intmate. He should take what he wanted and crush those who opposed him. But she was ever his conscience, the whisper of sanity in his mind, even after she’d walked out on him five years before. Even though they’d barely exchanged letters, too raw from what might have been.

It was a dark day, a day to bask in tortured memories. To wallow in pain so sharp it was almost sweet.

Dane’s face a moment before the accident, the last look of shock before impact, before he’d died to save his little brother Nikola. His mother’s face in sorrow. His father’s stark disapproval.

Laughter of those who thought he was an uncouth idiot from the backwaters of Croatia. The sneers at Oxford.

Helen choosing Druitt, because he was too damn slow to make his regard known to her. Helen beaten bloody by Druitt, in tears and pregnant with a monster’s child.

Edison robbing him of fifty thousand dollars. Digging ditches in the pouring rain to pay the bills, to buy the equipment he needed.

The boom of the ice kraken striking the ship. The desperation of trying to help Helen get people out of steerage. The icy blackness of the water as he swam through it, trying to find survivors and boosting them into half-empty lifeboats and pieces of floating debris from the fallen Titanic.

Clinging to the side of Helen’s boat, holding her hand. He held her hand on the Carpathia. On the dock in New York. He held her hand all the way to his room at the Waldorf. He let go when she kissed him. When she undressed him.

It was two weeks until they left that room. Two weeks of discovering each other. The wonders of electricity flowing over her skin. Learning her scent, her flavor, even the taste of her blood. She was generous and greedy all at once.

Then, after a particular sweet, rich night of worshipping each other, he whispered that he loved her. And she started to drift away. She wanted to tour New York, find a building for a new Sanctuary, an American Sanctuary. She moved out of their room, his room, to “maintain appearances” as she sought to become a player in the scene of New York’s abnormal community. She disappeared slowly, like a mist evaporating from a mirror until all he had was an image of himself, and dreams of a dark haired Helen who told him she loved him.

After that, his heart was harder, and his world started to fall apart. No one would fund anything he did. Boldt wanted money, not promises, and he lost his rooms at the Waldorf for $20,000 of debt. Then came the war, and the world went mad. So he stood, waiting to see his tower die, and wondering if the world would be better without the Mad Serb.

“Hello, Nikola.”

He whipped around, shocked that anyone had been able to sneak up on him. But in his maudlin state, Helen Magnus had managed it.

Red hair, only just touching her shoulders in length, and half-tucked under a kerchief. Blue chambray skirt and blouse, cream apron, fit for work but impeccably clean. All in the loose style of the day, without a hint of the beautiful curves underneath. If you didn’t look into those remarkable blue eyes and notice the elegant bearing of her shoulders, this woman would disappear into the multitudes. It was Helen, but she was very different than the Helen that had danced in tangerine silk in the ballroom of the Titanic, or whose honey blonde hair had spread across his pillows at the Waldorf.

“Helen,” his eyes drank her in, from her long, strong fingers clutching each opposite elbow as she huddled against the buffeting wind, to the tempting curve of her bare neck, the soft smile on her lips, the bright hunger in her eyes. She’d missed him. But that wasn’t enough.

“Have you come to wallow with me? Come to observe my ego at its low point?” He let his eyes roam over her. Even in unflattering clothing, she was temptation itself for him, a match for his fire. “If you’ve come to me in pity to offer your body as a distraction from my woes, I’m not entirely sure I would turn you down, but I would hate myself in the morning.”

He turned away from her, not wanting to see the hurt in her eyes at his words. It was hard enough to turn her away, but if she loved him and left him now, at this nadir, he was not sure he could find the strength to pick himself up again and start anew. But she didn’t chastise him. She didn’t scream at him. She didn’t leave.

She laughed. A bright sound that seemed to cleave through the clouds, breaking their gloom as a few beams of sunlight touched the beach, setting her aglow as he turned back to look at her.

“Why did you bring the truck, Nikola? Trying to pick up souvenirs?” She nodded toward the tower and stepped closer, so close that her skirts whipped his legs in the breeze.

It sounded so juvenile when she said it like that. “Perhaps I’m waiting until nightfall to reclaim the secret heart of my research, make off to Timbuktu, and build an empire of free electricity and knowledge in the desert. I could do it. I’m a genius after all. Why are you here? Coming to celebrate this nation’s escape from your British clutches?”

“Yes Nikola, I’m standing on a beach on Long Island because I’ve heard the July Fourth fireworks in New York Harbor to be best viewed some seventy miles away in the middle of the day.” She blew out a breath, her eyes distant. “How is Katharine?”

“What?” he tried to think who she meant, but the most obvious answer seemed unlikely. “Katharine Johnson?”

“Your letters were…have been, very flirtatious to her. A married woman.”

Nikola chuckled. How on earth did she know what he wrote in his letters to Robert Johnson’s wife? If he didn’t know better, he would think Helen was jealous. “Katharine is a good friend. A good friend, who is sixty one years old.”

“You are also sixty one. And I am…”

“Sixty seven. And as gorgeous as ever. But Katharine’s mind is young and sharp….and still very much in love with her husband.” He turned away, looking out toward the sea. “She flirts with me, because her husband can’t flirt with me. I flirt with her, because the woman I love, loves someone who is completely wrong for her. You should be grateful. I’ll be flirting with you for centuries, and she’s made me very good at it.”

He turned to her again and grinned wide enough to show his canines, a false grin that he hoped she wouldn’t see right though.

“Oh, you are an idiot, Nikola Tesla. But I love you.”

His mouth fell open as his mind seized, and dreams suddenly became memories, fantasies to fact. He fell to his knees in the sand, and she rushed forward to kneel with him, her arms wrapped around him, her face buried in the crook of his neck.

His hand came up to cradle the back of her head and he could feel her tears against the skin of his throat. His own tears tasted salty on his lips, the wind drying them before he could lick them away.

“Oh Helen, Helen I missed you. Even when you were here, you were so far away.”

She pulled away to look into his eyes, her own wide and naked with emotion. “I’m sorry Niko, I’m so sorry I keep leaving you. I was so scared then. So sure that building the Sanctuaries was all I needed, and anything else would distract me from my purpose.” She pressed a chaste kiss to his lips and pulled away again.

“It takes me a century to learn my lessons, Nikola. You know how stubborn I am. Now, let’s get you out of here and away from this pathetic show.” She waved an arm toward the tower, and as if on cue, there was a great boom, followed by a roar from the crowd who had bought tickets to see the destruction of Tesla’s, “Million Dollar Folly.” The tower slowly began to lean to the side, and Nikola grit his teeth, staring at it as though willing it to resist. It seemed to listen to its master, for instead of crashing to the ground, the tower stayed bent at a thirty degree angle, as though some mad cross between the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Eiffel Tower.

Nikola let out a whoop, and danced around, grabbing Helen’s hands and spinning her around in a mad waltz. She laughed, dumbstuck at his antics, until he pulled her in for a kiss that started out sloppy and silly and ended soft and so so sweet. She tasted like salt and sea and Darjeeling and he had missed her, this Helen. His Helen.

“It looks like my salvage mission must wait for another day, ljubavi. Let’s get out of here.”

He pulled her with him, and they ran over the dunes toward the dirt track along the edge of the cliff. There was a hunter green Model T truck in sparkling condition, the back covered with a white awning declaring, “Prentiss Fine Beverages, Toasts for All Occasions.”

He stopped his run toward the truck when she dug in her heels and began to cackle. “You stole this!” she held her stomach as she laughed, as Nikola waited, tapping his toe in the scrub grass at the side of the road.

“I borrowed it. I have every intention of returning it. The owner owes me a favor – I put him in the know of a deal on an excellent vintage of Rioja at a bargain price.”

“I’m sure you were the major customer for that buy. Do you owe him thousands as well?” she was still laughing, but the reminder of his financial collapse was like a bucket of ice water over his head in a Smiljan winter.

He sat down hard on the running board, feeling as though all the air had rushed out of him and he hadn’t the strength to stand.

“Why do you need me now, Helen? I’m nothing. I’ve lost everything. My patents are gone. The funding dried up. I could revolutionize the world, and no one will listen to me. Tell me, did I disappear on you? Did Nikola Tesla die, accused of being a traitor?” He looked up again at the leaning tower in the distance, icy rage drawing his lips tight. “At least with the tower broken, they won’t accuse me of sending secret messages to the bloodthirsty Germans.”

She sat next to him, a hand on his knee, her forehead pressed against his shoulder. They sat for a moment, listening to the wind and the waves and in the distance, the disappointed crowd dispersing from the display on the cliff above.

“You did disappear on me. I remember reading about this day in the paper in London, buried on a back page, behind the senseless war propaganda and the lists of the noble dead.” Her voice was bitter, her pain still fresh. “I knew I should have been here for you. All of us should have been here. But there was a war on, and I was convinced you would pull through. But your letters stopped. News of you disappeared. I was worried.” She took a deep breath, and he shrugged out of his top coat, pulling it around her shoulders and draping his arm there as well.

“I would have looked for you, tracked you down and made you come back to me in London or to take up a job at the new Sanctuary here in New York, but then came the Influenza.” She turned to look at his face, and he cocked his head at her, listening. She rarely talked so freely of the future, and though he knew he shouldn’t be, he was greedy for this taste of an oracle’s knowledge.

“In four months time, a pig farmer in Hunan will come down with a respiratory infection. He passes it on to his family and many in the marketplace before he dies. Next February, Britain will bring ten thousand Chinese workers to dig trenches and lay rail tracks behind the front lines in France and Belgium. By July, fifty thousand soldiers are infected with influenza. Young healthy people die in the thousands, by cytokine storm. By nineteen twenty, fifty million humans will have died from this flu, perhaps three percent of the entire world.”

“God help us.” Nikola whispered, as he pictured the devastation that would come.

Helen shook her head, more tears forming in her eyes. “But among abnormals, it was…is…will be worse. That pig farmer in Hunan was a folding man, an abnormal. The virus is much more deadly for abnormals. I myself became infected, my immune system reacting with overwhelming ferocity that nearly killed me. James came close to death despite his beautiful machine. A full twenty percent of all abnormals on the planet died. Whole subspecies were wiped out forever.”

Her eyes searched his. “I was terrified that you had died. Alone, forgotten somewhere. After I recovered, I spent two years searching for you, helping whatever abnormal communities I came across to honor their dead and recover where they could. But you had disappeared.” She turned away, “The first time I set foot in Old City, the first time I laid eyes on the grand Pacific Ocean, I was looking for you. But I fell in love with that place. I didn’t stay then. I returned to London, heartbroken, sure that you were dead.”

He locked those clues away, knowing she was too raw to talk in detail about something that was past and future both. “I was….will be, with you, won’t I?” he lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss against her knuckles.

She held his eyes captive for a long moment, “You never would tell me where you had been. I was so hurt. But I still followed you to Egypt. Looking for a lost vampire tomb. Nineteen twenty two was a good year.”

He closed his eyes in bliss. Five years. He would have five years with her. He knew she was in pain, but oh, he would do his best to distract her from what she wasn’t allowed to change.

“I’m sorry you can’t fix it. I’m sorry you can’t save them all.”

She smirked at him, raising an eyebrow. “But I can save some.”

He drew back, suddenly frightened. “What about all those lectures I endured. ‘Can’t threaten the time stream! Can’t change the future. No Nikola, I can’t make you fabulously wealthy, or time itself might cease to exist!’ You can’t be risking everything we have over people destined to die.”

She grinned at him, the thrill of adventure quirking her lips in a way that made him want to kiss her for years. “One of the most confusing things about the die-off of 1919, was that so many abnormals disappeared without a trace. Ten thousand beings seemed to fall off the face of the earth, leaving no trace. I remember spending three years in the thirties trying to solve that mystery, with no luck. But I understand it now, Nikola. I made my own mystery.”

“Helen,” his voice was thick, fear warring with incandescent lust. She was beautiful when she was being devious, “What did you do?”

She leaned her head back against the bright green door of the Model T, “I have a genius consultant, you see. He designed a large scale stasis chamber, as a thought exercise. One that could potential keep an adult frozen in time for decades, barring power interruption or natural disaster.”

Nikola blinked at her, lips parted, “I never thought our bedroom chitchat was going to become the basis for saving thousands. Again, what did you do?”

“I’ve built four Sanctuaries so far. All hidden well underground. Powered with your oscillators and geothermal turbines, with stasis chambers at the ready. I need your help for final preparations, but I believe we can rescue over fifteen species, thousands of beings, and give them a chance at life in the future.”

“You’ll let them out after you replace your younger self?” She nodded. “Just how long is that, Helen? How can you risk our world on a whim, on a dream?” He was angry and frustrated, excited and horny. Even as he chastised her, his hand was on her knee, the fabric of her skirt slowly riding up as his hands fiddled with it.

“River told me, Nikola.”

He was brilliant, but he was very very confused. “Our daughter? The fetus in the stasis unit that you had me fix?” She’d taken to calling the child, “River”, but refused to say why.

“There was nothing wrong with the box. As soon as you looked at it, the lights returned to green, as though it simply needed your presence.”

“I may be a miracle worker, Helen, but the lights went yellow again within two months.”

“And they returned to green the very night you talked about the large-scale stasis unit.” She practically bounced with excitement, the truck shaking as she leapt to her feet to face him fully. “Every time those lights turn yellow, it is not the stasis failing, it is a threat to her existence. River was created mere weeks before I jumped into the past. If I do something, or don’t do something, that is crucial to the time stream, I threaten her very existence.”

He stood, cupping her shoulders, trying to process things at lightning speed, “You are using our child as a dousing rod for the future? If you consider a course of action and it alters the future…”

“Then our child is threatened, and I know to stop. I cannot go to the Western Front and shoot a lance corporal named Adolf between the eyes. I cannot give Woodrow Wilson a course of penicillin. I cannot give Nikola Tesla tips for the stock market.” She arched an eyebrow at him to chastise him for past pleas for financial help, but brought up a hand to cup his cheek with affection. “But I can save a few thousand abnormals from certain death.”

There was a long pause as he digested this. He looked into her glowing eyes, so exultant with this small victory in the course of her long, long wait to reclaim her life and name as Helen Magnus. This Helen Bancroft, his Helen, was still a fighter, still driven to help those who needed it, still magnificent in triumph or defeat. He moved a hand up and snatched her kerchief, letting her hair free to blow in the wind like an auburn cloud.

“I like the hair. It’s different.”

“You liked the brown, and the blonde. You just want to get into my knickers.” She grinned at him, and he had a feeling that she was more than willing to let him into said knickers.

“So, are you wearing knickers this time then?” She blushed, and he smirked. Over a hundreds of years old, and he could still make her blush like a schoolgirl. “I love you, Helen. I love what changes, and I love what stays the same. Red hair, brown hair, white or green, underneath it all you are Helen Magnus, and I am yours.”

She pulled him into a kiss, short and powerful, then captured his hand, pulling him toward the covered back of the truck. She pulled out the tailgate and then scrambled up into the bed of the truck, revealing that yes, she had worn knickers. Bloomers, with little red bows at the thighs. In this wind, it was a necessity. He found those red bows almost as interesting as her naked skin would be.

She crawled forward and he followed, raising the tailgate and turning to undo the knots in the canvas, blocking them from view. He’d created a dark little cave out of the ocean breeze, lit only by tiny gaps where the canvas met the wooden sides of the truck bed.

He turned around, and he had never been so glad he’d been thrown out of his hotel and had rejected sleeping in his lab. There on the pallet that had passed for his bed the last week, among his carpetbag and three discarded wine bottles, his topcoat was discarded on the floor. Helen was sitting on top of the pile, unbuttoning her blouse with slow, careful movements, her legs spread wide and welcoming.

He crept forward, sitting on his haunches when between her knees. Watching with wide dark eyes as her stomach was exposed and she pulled off her apron and threw the shirt over her head to land draped over the trunk holding his suits. She wore a cream brassiere, something scandalously daring and completely new that cupped her breasts perfectly, arranging her ample curves into perfect form.

He stared in rapt attention as his hands slid over her ankles, grateful for her lack of stockings as he stroked over her soft skin. He unbuttoned her boots with nimble fingers as he watched her work tiny little hooks over her sternum until the fabric parted and she heaved a little sigh of pleasure. She shrugged her shoulders and maneuvered her arms until her entire torso was bare, and he bent forward, pressing soft kisses against the red marks that the garment had left.

He spoke, his lips against the top of her ribs, his nose brushing the curve of her left breast. “Women’s fashion is full of torture devices meant to pain females and torture males.” She laughed and her skin pressed against his face, and he was surrounded by the scent of her. He licked her skin and she giggled again, and he tasted salt and rosewater and sweet, sweet Helen.

He pulled the yards of her skirt up to bunch at her waist, wishing they had a bed and a week so they could have a proper reunion. He stroked long fingers over those enticing bloomers, feeling the wet heat of her through the thin silk. She threaded a hand through his hair and he cursed the sticky grey chalk he had to color his hair with in an effort to look his age. Her knee pressed against the seam of his trousers, pushing insistently against his hard cock and he ceased to care if they were both filthy.

He yanked at the red bow tying closed the slit in her bloomers and he stroked two fingers into her wet folds, diving into her entrance to the source of sweet, slick nectar. She arched her hips and fell backwards, dragging him on top of her as she collapsed to the pallet with a thump.

“No teasing, Nikola. We’ve got a ship to catch in San Francisco in six days. Fuck me!”

“So demanding, ljubavi.” He turned his hand, curling his fingers against the rough spot inside her channel and stroking fast and hard. The noise of wet flesh and the pitch of her moans was torture as she planted her feet against the floor of the truck and pressed her hips against his hand and came hard around his fingers. He stroked softly to let her come down as she panted for breath, then pulled out his fingers to suck her juices from each digit, giving her a lascivious smile with each delicious lick.

She took out her frustrations on his trousers, unsnapping his braces, and yanking open the fly. She pushed past dark blue silk to grip in just a little too hard, and before he could stop himself he had transformed, his teeth and fingernails sharp enough to kill. His voice was deep as he warned her, “Helen, it’s been years since the younger you left New York, and I haven’t been very good with taking my medication. I’m hungry and beyond aroused. Let me…”

She stroked him in a tight fist, brutal pleasure ratcheting up his spine. “I want all of you, Nikola. I love all of you. Fuck me, bite me, I’m yours just as much as you are mine.”

He gripped her hands, pulling her away from his cock and forcing them to her sides as he rose over her, pinning her to the floor. Helen groaned, a wide smile on her face, her eyes dark with arousal, not fear. He let go of one hand, and pushed the other between them to rip the slit in her bloomers wide. Then too quick for her to protest or grab at him, he swept down her body, pressing his nose against the dark gold curls at the top of her sex and inhaling deep. His tongue pressed against her clit, for he was not in the mood to tease. Her hands clutched at his hair and she began to swear at him and he smiled into her folds before sucking her clit into his mouth and thrusting three fingers into her sheath. She was already close, and when she began to chant his name he swirled and pressed and let loose a very soft electric shock within her that made her arch off the floor and scream his name.

He let go of her clit, pulled his fingers from her depths and transformed, setting his teeth carefully close, but not too close, to her femoral artery. He pierced her skin and let the blood flow, sweet and rich with her pleasure. He sucked on the wound and stroked a knuckle over her clit, his talons scratching lightly at the skin of her inner thighs. She convulsed again, her climax long and strong, the flavor beyond exquisite.

When he licked her wound closed she lay very still on his bloodstained coat, taking deep breaths that made her breasts jiggle enticingly. He moved up her body slowly, pressing kisses to her hip, nipping at the skin of her stomach with human teeth. When he sucked a nipple into his mouth, she groaned. “You are going to kill me with pleasure, Nikola. I missed you far, far too much.”

He sucked harder before letting her go with a pop. “What do you think you do to me, Helen, moj dragi?” He licked the sweat from between her breasts, then pushed himself up over her, looking into her eyes as he settled his hips between hers. He stayed there, looking down at her as she worked with clever feet to push his trousers down to his ankles. He memorized the flush in her cheeks, her kiss swollen lips and the alluring red of her hair against the cream satin lining of his coat. This would be a treasured memory, until it was a vivid fantasy, and then no doubt a memory once again. His life, their life, was insane.

Worry in her eyes, she cupped his cheek. “Please, Niko. Please love. I need all of you. Come back from wherever you’ve gone.”

He kissed her, consumed her, his tongue sweeping through her mouth to share the flavor of her blood, her juices. She moaned, wrapping her arms around him, and as she canted her hips up, his cock was pressed against her perfectly to slide deep.

He thrust forward, sliding into his mate as though she’d been created to fit him. The whole truck seemed to rock around him with this movement, and he pulled away from her kiss to look at their odd little love nest. He laughed, thrusting again to her happy moan of approval. He knelt, pulling her up and hooking her legs up and over his arms, spreading her wide. He pushing her damned skirts out of the way so he could see where they were joined, the red marks of his bite on her thigh and the swollen dark pink flesh meeting the slick brown-red of his cock as he thrust hard and fast into her depths.

She smiled up at him, her hands coming up to tease her nipples with the tips of her fingers, watching him watch her. He smirked down at her. “What’s the expression? You are hot.”

She laughed, the vibrations shaking her delightfully, even making her internal muscles clench around him so tight he had to fight not to erupt inside of her. “You remember that line, Niko. You will need it someday.”

He had to wipe that superior smile off her face. He wanted her here, now, with him and not lost in memories of her past – his future. He twisted his hips, rocking in a figure eight that changed the angle to press inside ever bit of her. She was so damn tight, so blistering hot. She dropped her hands, fisting the fabric of his top coat, her head thrashing side to side as she let out breathy pants of, “Ah! Ah! Ah!” with each slap of flesh.

He felt the hum of electricity flicker over his skin as his nerves burned, his climax sparking at the edges of his mind. His balls tightened and he couldn’t hold on, not when she was wrapped around him, offering him his dreams made flesh. She stopped thrashing, her eyes finding his in the half-light, hers wide and so so blue as she screamed, “Nikola!”

She clenched so tight that he exploded, cumming inside of her deep, groaning her name as all his nerved fired and a blue crackle of electricity sparked over both their bodies, tying them together as one entity, lost to pleasure.

He came back to consciousness collapsed over her, her legs loosely over his knees, her hands stroking slow circles over the fabric of his suit coat. He tried to push away from her, afraid he was crushing her, but she resisted, her legs and arms tightening to keep him close to her.

He nuzzled her neck and breathed in the scent of sex and Helen, until long minutes passed and the sound of rain began to strike the canvas above their heads.

He spoke, the words dragged up from where he’d hidden them deep. “I thought you were going to have me freeze you in a damn stasis chamber. I thought you would leave me alone for a century, waiting for you.”

She clutched at him, whispering against his skin, “Never. I know how terrible it is to wait for you, to know what we have and to yearn for it when we can’t be together. Waiting for a good enough excuse to come to you, to have you remember this – it’s a torture I would never put you through. Besides,” she pulled away from him to catch his eyes, “I have far, far too much to do to trust you to get it done without me.”

He wrinkled his nose at her but slid a hand over her hip, stroking the skin he could reach. He was more relieved than he could say, knowing she wanted him, needed him like he needed her. Unwilling to move but knowing that someday soon they would have the time to indulge in cuddling where they could be much more comfortable that the hard floor of a truck bed, he spoke softly into her ear, “As much as I want to stay here for another round, I believe you said we had a boat to catch in San Francisco, and if this rain keeps us this truck isn’t going anywhere in the mud.”

She sighed and let her arms and legs relax, mewing softly as he pulled away from her, his cock slipping out of her. “Were are we going, Helen? You need a technical miracle, I presume?”

She pushed up on to her elbows, doing nothing to cover her naked breasts or her vulva peeking out from the slit in her bloomers. He looked at her greedily as he pulled up his trousers and tucked himself away. “You said you wanted to go to Timbuktu, but I had a different stretch of sand in mind. Care to join me on a private island in Tonga?”

He blinked. “Tonga. The Kingdom of Tonga, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?”

“On Fu’u Fonu. An island unknown to humankind.”

His mind was already half gone imagining Helen naked under the tropical sun, his cock half hard at the thought of making love to her under a waterfall, the scent of coconuts heavy in the air.

“Sam Clemens once gave me a book of Polynesian languages. Thought if anyone would understand it, I would. Fu’u Fonu is the Great Turtle…oh no, Helen.” Suddenly visions of a tropical paradise evaporated into a giant, wrinkly green mess. “Don’t tell me you’ve found a huge turtle and want us to catch it?”

She smiled and turned around, looking for her lost brassiere and shirt, no doubt and pushing her skirt down.

“Helen, you are asking me to give up all hope of decent wine for the foreseeably future to go befriend a turtle, aren’t you?”

“The turtle is already a friend, and it’s larger than twenty city blocks. There’s a sandy beach and coconut trees, even a flock of birds that lives on its back.” She stopped the acrobatic process of donning the brassiere to stretch forward to give him a kiss. He took over, pulling at straps and hooking the tiny fasteners with nimble fingers and she smiled at him softly. Helping her put on her clothes was almost more intimate that taking them off, and it distracted him from the concept of years of his life spent in a sunny climate with no wine.

“The Tongan Sanctuary is underwater, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And I have to build an underwater city without the proper equipment to dive. I’m sure you’ll want to prove to me just how long a vampire can hold his breath?” She smiled at him with a twist at the corner of her lips, and he thought of a thousand wicked ways he’d love to hold his breath for her.

“At least tell me you will be modern in your choice of swimming costume. You wearing one of those sacks they had women wearing years ago back in England will make me laugh my head off and you’ll shoot me.”

“Who’s to say I’ll wear much of a swimming costume at all?”

He gaped at her, trying to think of a suitably witty response when his mind had short-circuited, when there was a resounding knock thudded against the side of the truck.

“Hey, you in there? What are you doing on his road? It’s restricted access!”

Nikola blushed, quite a feat in a vampire, and Helen covered her mouth to hold back her giggle. She looked for her lost brassiere and Nikola smoothed the front of his trousers as he called out in a terrible thick New York accent, “Sorry, sorry. Just trying to find a gas can in the back of this clunker.” He picked up a metal can and winked at her, then pulled down a corner of the back canvas and climbed over the tailgate, preparing a suitable lie to get them out of Long Island and on a train to the West Coast as soon as possible.


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Eighth Time and the Last Time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Chartreusian for the beta. She also convinced me into an epilogue, which I will post right after this finale, as well as a timeline of events from Helen's perspective.
> 
> I really enjoyed writing in this world, and though I haven't gotten much feedback or have that many readers, if anyone wants to comment with an outtake they would love to see, I would love to have an excuse to extend this world!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!

**The Eighth Time**

 

**Ethiopia, 2011**

 

They fell into the shabby little room together, unable to keep their hands off of each other. The door slammed behind them with a loud groan, but neither of them cared. Addis Ababa wasn’t known for its luxurious accommodations, but the River Hotel was the first they’d come across, and he wasn’t about to have, “I’m immortal again!” celebratory sex in the back of the Land Rover. He’d fed from an antelope on the way back toward civilization, though it was not a species he preferred. He needed his medication at some point, but he wasn’t at risk of killing Helen with anything but pleasure. Lots and lots and lots of pleasure.

 

They’d both shrugged out of the leather coats back in the truck, after the second stop to kiss each other senseless – this time _after_ he’d fed and he wasn’t as risk of digging his teeth into her carotid artery. Now, she had him pressed up against fading wallpaper, her lips sucking at his bottom lip, his hands cupping her ass. She unbuttoned his vest and two buttons on his shirt before she gave up and tore at the fabric, buttons popping off and wobbling across the linoleum floor. He laughed into her kiss and returned the favor, letting loose his talons and slicing into the fabric of her black tank top until the seams were shredded.

 

She growled at him, biting into his lip in retaliation, and it took everything in him to keep from going full vamp at the delightfully rough stimulation. “Careful, Helen. I’m still hungry.”

 

“Coming from anyone else Nikola, I would take that as a promise.” She arched away from him enough to yank at his belt, which sang out with a snap from his belt loops. Impatient, he reclaimed her lips in a kiss, trapping her hands as she tried to undo his zipper. He willed the tiny hooks of her bra to separate, and he was delighted that he’d retained the fine magnetic control he’d gained during his thankfully brief stint as a mortal.

 

He pulled back from the kiss just enough to whisper against her lips, “Oh, it can still be a promise.” He dove back into her lips, his tongue tangled with hers and his hands stroked down over the smooth skin of her back. He pulled gently with magnetic will on the wires beneath her breasts, until he could feel the hard tips of her bare nipples against his chest. He grinned into the kiss, then struck at her waistband, slicing through the waistband of her tight trousers and retracting his talons to pull hard. Alas, no luck, the damn things were far too tight.

 

He spun them around, pressing her into the wall with superior strength. He pressed kisses to her jaw, her throat, before bending to capture a nipple as he pulled on the sides of her uncooperative trousers, which seemed to be glued to her hips. The flavor of her on his tongue was making his cock throb painfully, and he wanted to get to the source of her before he exploded like a boy within the confines of his own trousers. Helen in the meantime had plunged her hands into his hair, scratching at his scalp and moaning loudly as he sucked her nipple deep into his mouth, teasing it with the sharpness of still human teeth.

But he let her go with a pop and fell to his knees, unleashing his talons to cut into her trousers with surgical precision. He yanked the shreds from her legs, leaving her in her boots and nothing else.

 

“Nikola!” She sounded both aroused and appalled, and he looked up at her with a wink before gripping her hips and sliding his tongue into her folds, his nose buried in her neat curls as he inhaled the pure, sultry scent of her want. Above him she was fighting to shake off her bra and the remnants of her shirt. He was fully intent on distracting her. Two long licks with the flat of him tongue and her hips bucked. Unwilling to tease for now, he sucked her clit into his mouth circled his tongue around it. She let out a bright little scream, and then he felt his ears almost yanked off as she pulled on them.

 

Cursing at her in Serbian and fighting the urge to fully transform, he stood on his feet, still clutching her hips tightly. She was fast with her fingers, and had his fly unzipped and her hand around his cock before he could decide on a clever quip.

 

Those blue eyes of hers were lit with fire as she stroked him, pulling him fully out of his trousers and boxers, smearing drops of precum around the head of his cock.

 

She was deadly serious as she spoke, “You are mine.” She squeezed his cock brutally and he hissed in return. She laughed darkly. “My vampire. Jebi me, Nikola!”

 

He was surprised he didn’t come right there, but he acted with all the speed of his race, pushing her up against the wall and hooking his hands under her thighs, picking her up and aligning his cock with her entrance. He thrust forward into the tight, wet heat of her and grit his teeth at the beautiful sounds she made, fighting the urge to bite into her creamy neck when he was this far gone. “Jealously looks good on you, Helen.”

 

She arched her hips into him, begging him to move with her body even as she stared him down with fire in her eyes. “Get on with it, Niko.”

 

He thrust once, long and deep, before pulling out almost all the way and ramming home once again. “You shouldn’t be jealous of that bitchy tramp, Helen. You know you would always be my choice for queen. Maybe we should try restarting the vampire race, a better vampire race, the old fashion way. Care to be progenitor to the future, Helen?” He pumped up into her again, hard and deep, desperate to distract himself from coming, needing to have her come and come hard. The thought of her having his children was surprisingly alluring, one often in his dreams, but he thought it was likely impossible.

 

“I haven’t ovulated in a century, Nikola.” Her nails dug into the back of his neck and she tightened her walls around him, squeezing his cock hard enough he saw flashes of white at the corners of his eyes.

 

He pushed one of her thighs over his hip and moved his hand between them, rubbing at her clit with his thumb. “But it would be so much fun to practice anyway, wouldn’t it. Say, for the next century or so?”

 

She laughed as she panted for breath, sweat trickling down between her breasts as he watched those beautiful orbs shake with each plunge of his cock.

 

“You are an idiot, Nikola Tesla. But I love you.”

 

He looked up and stared into the endless blue of her eyes, and he saw the truth of her words. She loved him. Then, his mind shattered into a thousand shards, each piercing him heart and soul. His body thrust, faster and faster, as a thousand images of making love to Helen, fucking Helen, comforting Helen, swept through him, pushing aside false, weak memories that he’d created out of nothing. The births of his children, creating technology for glorious hidden cities, laughing and fighting and crying and loving.

 

She screamed in his arms, convulsing in pleasure as he poured himself into her, lost to the lifetimes burning in his mind. He came back to full consciousness to find them tangled on the floor, sweaty and sated, Helen looking at him with a concerned twist to her lips.

 

“Are you all right, Nikola? You seemed to be lost…a side effect of Afina’s blood? That was pure vampire blood, no serum. Perhaps we should head back, run some tests?”

 

He pressed a kiss to her lips, silencing her and buying him time to think as he kissed the women who was not yet his wife. His wife. Mother of his children. For she was ovulating, the Praxian cure working at a deeper level than she could have believed.

 

This was the beginning. The start of the mad journey through time his wife would take. For once, he was the one who knew everything.

 

Tonight he would woo her, win her, mark her as his own. Tonight they would create their first child. He would make her long for him as he had always longed for her. Make her want to search him out despite the risk. He was elated and terrified all at once. Everything could be taken from him in one fell swoop if he screwed up.

 

He kissed her like he held his entire universe in his arms.

 

She melted in to him, and he wrapped his arms around her back and thighs, getting to his feet holding her easily, with a vampire’s grace and strength restored to him. Not giving up kissing her for a moment, he kicked off his shoes and stepped out of the trousers pooled around his feet. Then he strode to the bed, kneeling there and placing her gently on the soft surface, following her down to hover over her, his lips moving from her lips to the tip of her nose.

 

He pressed soft kisses to her eyelids, her temple, her cheek. He felt her fingers stroking his back, tentative, unsure. He drew back from her and let all his masks down. He let her see everything, every bit of him. How much he needed her. How much he loved her.

 

She opened her eyes to stare up into his, and the blue of her gaze immersed him like a cool mountain lake. He read a thousand questions in her eyes, and willed her to see answers he dare not speak in his own.

 

She reached up to brush a hand across his cheek and he turned slightly to press a kiss against her fingers, his eyes never leaving hers. She wet her lips nervously and leaned up to press her lips against his, a silent plea for more. More he would give.

 

He rolled them to lay face to face and kissed her slowly, steadily. His shrugged out of his shirt and vest, then carefully, gently removed the last shreds of her shirt. He moved his kisses down her jaw to her neck, and kissed a necklace across her collarbone as her hands slid into his hair, caressing him with equal gentleness, something they’d rarely shared before in her timeline.

 

They’d been enthusiastic. They’d been frenetic and needy and explosive. They’d even made love full of laughter. But this gentle softness, this intimate care, this was new to Helen.

 

It was his most precious memories brought to life once again. His past. Their future.

 

He trailed lips and hands lower, over the slight curve of her abdomen, over the bones of her hips, over the bruises forming on her thighs when he’d been lost to a torrent of regained memories. Over knees and strong calves. He peeled her ruined trousers from her ankles, and took off her sturdy boots and socks, caressing feet that were far too large to be fashionably Victorian but that he had always, always loved. She shivered under him, her eyes glowing as she looked down at him, full of awe and a trace of fear at giving in. He traced his nose along her skin, nipping at her skin in a way he knew made her ticklish and she giggled, a happy sound that made him smile into the crease of her knee.

 

His fingers stroked higher, feathering lightly against the lips of her sex slick with his climax and hers, before pressing slowly inside, watching her face as she sighed softly, biting her lip in pleasure. He pressed against that spot within her that made her writhe before retreating, unwilling to drive her higher quite yet. Still, she watched him, silent, her eyes taking everything in, giving him free reign over her body. Trusting him.

 

He hooked her leg over his shoulder as he moved to press a kiss to her clit. He looked up into her face as his tongue swirled through her folds, tasting them both together. His favorite flavor, one perfectly balanced and intense even with the altered senses of vampirism. Her chest moved as her breath came faster, and his fingers began to move slowly, firmly, twisting and pushing inside her with decades of experience in exactly what she liked. He sucked her clit into his mouth, using just enough pressure from his human teeth to stimulate pleasure not pain. Her eyes widened, grew blurry and unfocused, yet he held her gaze, willing her to keep watching him. He saw when pleasure broke in a wave through her as her hips convulsed and she cried out softly, whispering his name.

 

He let her down slowly gently, pressing a last kiss to her curls as he withdrew his fingers, sucking them into his mouth to catch every last bit of their flavor as she chuckled softly, her eyes finally closed, overwhelmed. He sat up and pressed a hand to her hip, rolling her over on her stomach as she let out a surprised little oomph and questioning, “Nikola?”

 

He remained silent, pressing a kiss to the back of her calves as he stroked his fingertips over her skin in slow circles, letting a trickle of electricity magnify the sensation. She relaxed under him, boneless with her orgasms, and he smiled against her skin. He continued slow circles over her calves, kisses to the backs of her knees, firmer sweeps of electrified thumbs over the tight muscles of her thighs strained from running for her life and having him fuck her up against the wall. By the time he cupped the firm round globes of her beautiful bottom in his hands, she was moaning softly, breathing deep, almost in a trance. He bit into her left buttock with human teeth, and she let out a surprised little scream that made him chuckle as he soothed the abused flesh with more kisses.

 

He rubbed up her back with soft fingertips, circling electric pulses that made her whimper and writhe ever-so-slightly against the rough cotton sheets. When he got to her shoulders he straddled her thighs, letting her feel the hard length of his cock throb against her buttocks as he dug into tight muscles with thumbs enhanced with his special spark. She turned her head to look over her shoulder, her eyes half open and her lips twisted in a slight smile. She was more relaxed than he could remember, soft and luxurious in her trust of him. He kept on for long minutes, rubbing her neck and scalp and temples with soft sure pressure, until she was circling her hips, teasing his cock with the cleft of her ass.

 

She squirmed with delicious want, the scent of her surrounded him like a cloud of sweet need. He finally rose off of her, letting her thighs part slightly. He could see the slick pink lips of her vulva parted and wanting, and he reached down to grip his cock, stroking the head over those folds and pressing down to tease her clit trapped against the sheets.

 

“Nikola!” she chastised, clearly wanting more.

 

He pressed the head of his cock into her entrance, then put both hands flat on the bed, hovering over her as he pressed slowly and surely down into her channel, pushing hard against the front of her walls. She sucked in a breath at the angle, and before she could become accustomed to the sensation he pulled almost all the way out. He leaned down and pressed his lips against her ear.

 

“I love you.”

 

He thrust quickly, as deep as he could go in this position, pushing against her G-spot and taking advantage of many years experience in finding just the perfect alignment of their bodies.

 

“Oh, my God. Nikola!”

 

He smiled, withdrawing and thrusting in slow, lazy strokes as she circled her hips and writhed against the bed, keening his name softly as he dove her steadily out of her mind.

 

“What, how? I….oh, I….”

 

“I love you.”

 

Deeper, harder, just the slightest bit faster and she was moaning continuously, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes as pleasure sang through her. Her walls clamped down on him and he grit his teeth, fighting the urge for explode into her in favor of continuing to thrust, lengthening her orgasm as it came gushing from her.

 

“I love you,” he whispered again.

 

Suddenly, just when she should be exhausted and spent, she became a wild, feral thing under him. She pushed back on his cock, pushing her bum against his hips and scrambling up on to hands and knees while he was still embedded inside of her. She looked over her shoulder at him with narrowed eyes and a wide, manic grin, just before she pushed herself deep on to his cock, slamming her hips back with considerable strength.

 

He gripped her hips, being very careful with his positioning, as he was very certain that he was about to lose control over his baser urges and he didn’t want to impale his mate with anything but his cock. She continued her plunges, rocking back into him with determination, letting out a grunt every time he was seated fully within her. The pleasure of it spiraled through him, mercilessly shredding his control. He loved her like this, taking him, fucking him even from underneath.

 

He gave her want she wanted, thrusting hard and deep, pushing her farther and farther up the bed until she was head down, pressing her hands hard against the wall to push back into his pounding thrusts. Pleasure coiled white hot at the base of his spine, the corners of his eyes, threatening to steal his senses from him. But he didn’t want to give him. He could smell sex and need, hear the slap of flesh, feel the slick tightness of her walls sliding past his cock, see the perfect curve of her hips and waist. But something was missing.

 

He stared at the back of her smooth neck, the blood thrumming hot and sweet beneath the surface, her pleasure bright and rich. This was not his wife. She carried no mark.

 

She needed to be claimed.

 

She tilted that neck, breathing hard, moaning after a particular hard thrust.

 

“Love you…love you, Niko. Please…please!” She tilted her head more, her beautiful dark hair falling to the side to reveal the perfect curve of shoulder and neck.

 

“Bite!”

 

He grew pale, eyes black, nails long and sharp and prinking the skin around her hips. His teeth were wicked and sharp, and he bent over her, teeth sliding through her flesh and into the muscle at the back of her neck, like a tiger pinning his mate.

 

Her sweet, hot blood flowed over his tongue as her walls clamped around him. She screamed, wild and happy, and he drank deep as his balls tightened and his cock convulsed, stream after stream of semen flooding deep within her rippling walls. It went on and on, white and purple streaks spearing across his vision until he was shaking with the aftermath. One last pull at her wound, her blood sparkling with her pleasure like fine champagne, and he carefully extracted his teeth from her skin. He should be weak, befuddled from one of the most intense orgasms of his life, but he felt strong, elated, burning with energy.

Relying on the few scattered legends of his ancestors for which he’d once combed archives across the world, he bit his tongue between still murderous teeth and let his blood flow. Then, he painted it across his marks in her skin with open-mouthed kisses, their blood mingling in perfect harmony. Normally, he could sooth any wound with his tongue, prevent scarring and encourage healing. But he wanted this to scar. He wanted his blood embedded with hers in this wound, he wanted to mark her forever his mate.

 

His tongue healed quickly, but the mark on her skin remained, and he pressed a kiss into her hair. She panted softly under him, held up only by the arm he’d forgotten he’d wrapped around her waist. He let them both fall to the side on the double bed, his cock still held within her depths. She nuzzled her head against his chin and wrapped her arm over his around her waist. He did not know if she knew now what he had done, but she would understand by the time she came to visit him in 1906.

 

He pressed another kiss to her hair and held her in silence as she fell into an exhausted sleep, her breathing soft and even. He wished he could warn her. He wished he could be by her side as she jumped back into the past, fought Adam the cockroach, discovered she was pregnant. He closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of her dusty hair as he fell into a light sleep.

 

When he woke the first time, it was to her mouth around his cock, her eyes staring up at him with a hint of devilry. She let him go with a long, slow suck, then climbed on top of him, easing down on him, looking into his eyes with a silent intensity that made his heart pound.

 

“I love you,” she said with a half-smile, her eyes full of an odd mix of amazement and triumph.

 

“As I love you,” he said back without hesitation, victory warring with the regret that he would soon hurt her deeply.

 

She leaned over him, pressing her breasts into his chest as she kissed him, continuing small circles of her hips that drove him half mad. They strove for a long, slow, blistering climax.

 

She pulled him out of the bed and into the pathetic excuse for a shower, and they washed each other as thoroughly as possible given the slow trickle of water. He spent far too long soaping her perfect breasts, and she perhaps spent a long time caressing his buttocks, and he made her come yet again with quick fingers over her clit, a sweet, sharp climax he loved to give her.

 

Once again they fell into bed, and she succumbed to exhaustion as he wrapped her in his arms. He held her in the half dark of their room, listening to the sounds of a city night whisper around them in an anonymous chorus. He shouldn’t need any more sleep, he wanted to enjoy holding this Helen as long as he possibly could. Still, he dozed.

 

The second time he woke, it was a soft scratch on the door. His cries opened with a snap, every muscle alert. But he calmed. He knew that pattern of soft scratching. Helen.

 

He disentangled himself from young Helen’s arms, unable to resist a soft kiss to her temple, knowing it would be a year, and a century,s before she saw him for more than five minutes. She stirred slightly, and he held his breath as she fell back into deep, even breathing, her fatigue too great to fight.

 

He tiptoed to the door and opened it a crack, and there was Helen, holding a pile of clothes. His Helen. Helen who had walked down an isle to him. Who had labored with his children. Who yelled at him about the number of socks he discarded for minute holes, and stole the blankets on cold nights.

 

“Hello, moj dragi.”

 

She simply smiled and leaned forward, kissing him softly in greeting. She pulled back and looked down at his naked body appreciatively. “What a welcome, husband.”

 

He grinned. “I knew you were coming, why not give you something to appreciate?”

 

She pushed past him, closing the door behind her with a gentle touch. She looked at the bed, at her younger self, with an odd look.

 

“Feeling jealous?” he asked, curious.

 

“Oddly enough, a bit. But mostly, I just feel a tiny bit of regret.” She reached up to stroke his cheek, and he leaned into her touch. “I should have come to you earlier. I should never have left you alone for twenty three years. I should…”

 

“You, Mrs. Tesla,” she wrinkled her nose at that, “were practically perfect. I love you, and we will have eternity. I can forgive a few stray decades.”

 

He pressed a kiss to her neck, near where her black tank top clearly revealed his healed scar. One she’d carried for a hundred and thirteen years.

 

“I assume I need to leave you here alone.”

 

She sighed and nodded, eyes straying once again to the sleeping figure of herself on the bed. “Get dressed. We need to hurry. Mai-lin is in labor with our first grandchild, and I want to be there for the birth.”

 

He stared at her for a moment before he tried to take the clothes in her arms. She frowned at him, “These are for me. If you leave me alone here in Ethiopia with nothing but shreds to wear out of this room, I guarantee I will not be searching for you in the past, no matter how good you are in bed.”

 

He repressed a laugh and searched the room for his dusty trousers and buttonless shirt. As he dressed, Helen placed the dark, no-doubt high-necked shirt, trousers and underthings on the tiny table near the bed, and got out a pen and paper from the bag she had slung over her shoulder.

 

“You leave a note.”

 

He buttoned the two buttons remaining on his vest and looked at her. “Will you tell me what to write? That would make for a fascinating existential debate about time loops at the next dinner party we throw, wouldn’t it?”

 

She chuckled softly, “If you ever agreed to throw a dinner party, it might just be the only conversation you would willingly have. No, I leave it to you to write. Just…don’t forget to remind me to bring you a birthday gift.”

 

He sat in a rickety chair to put on his shoes, and she stood gave one last look at her younger self still sleeping on the bed, before walking to the door. She turned to give him a vulnerable smile, and he smiled back, his heart in his eyes. Someday soon, they would have a future not tied up in quite so many knots with the past.

 

She stepped out of the door, leaving it ajar. He walked to the tiny table and the very blank piece of paper. He picked up the pen, and wrote.

 

     Helen,

 

          I love you, always.

          I had to leave, you told me so.

         Don’t hate me for too long. Remember to wish me a happy birthday with an appropriate present.

 

          -       Your Nikola

 

He paused, looking over at the sleeping woman he’d loved so thoroughly just hours ago. And he added.

 

              P.S. You look hot. So hot. Do you really think I could leave you alone for sixty years? Find me when you know the answer.

 

He set down the pen and backed away from her, restraining himself from pressing one more kiss against that smooth skin. If he wanted her, he could always seduce her in the transport pod on the way back to Inferus City to get back to Daniel and wife before the baby got here.

He smiled. He was going to be a grandfather. Deda Niko.

 

Wonders never cease.

 

 

 

**The Last Time**

 

Inferus City Sanctuary, 2012

 

They stood in the tunnel, pipes dripping around them as Heinrich – Henry, he’d earned that much, had his retinas scanned. Nikola tapped one foot impatiently, more than ready to solve this damn mystery Helen had been working on for so damn long. He had followed the clues she’d left him at the safe house – the one she wasn’t supposed to know about. He had even been nice enough to drag Wolf Boy with him – Helen had practically been his mother, after all.

 

Nikola had known Helen was up to something. He’d suspected something extraordinarily complex, even for her brilliant mind. She was different, older, even more deadly determined than she had been. Something had happened. Something involving time. He knew it in his bones. He thought he’d been collecting information to prove his theory, but somehow all the files were lost, and he was too busy to try and follow up on his suspicions.

 

That in itself was suspicious. Helen was one of the most important things in his entire world – why wouldn’t he have looked into why she was so different? Was there something controlling him? What was Helen involved in that was so deep? He wanted answers and he wanted them from her lips – after he kissed her breathless. She’d kissed him – she owed him one of his own. With tongue.

 

For twelve hours, Nikola had been in complete denial that Helen Magnus could be dead. The remains of the ragtag Sanctuary team had gotten the salvaged abnormals away from the ruins of the Sanctuary and into safe houses that the little sarcastic girl had tracked down. Nikola had sacrificed the sanctity of several of his own hidey-holes to the greater good.

 

As dawn broke, he’d dragged Henry to the small apartment that he’d kept in New City in case Helen threw him out – something she threatened to do frequently. There was a letter waiting for each of them there, slid under the door. Both contained paragraphs written in base 13 Morse code, a series of obtuse instructions to get somewhere underground in Old City. Neither of them had slept, but had walked all over town and ridden on every type of public transport just to be sure to lose any tails they had picked up. Finally, he couldn’t wiat any longer, and they had both scrambled underground and into these miserable, dripping tunnels.

 

The door opened silently, revealing a cave. The soft light shining from somewhere above revealed a lovely woman with reddish blonde curls dressed in jeans and a blazer, and a serious, tall fellow with dark hair in a crisp white lab coat. They both wore wide smiles, and they both seemed very familiar. He never forgot a name, and he’d never met these two. But his mind fairly throbbed with the idea that he knew them both.

 

“Hello, Da….Doctor Tesla, Mister Foss. We were just about to go out and track you down. I’m glad you solved our little quiz, it took you long enough.” The woman fairly bounced in excitement, the man glancing at her with a long-suffering look of annoyance that had almost a brotherly feel. Not a couple then. Co-workers?

 

The man spoke firmly, his voice holding only the tiniest rough edge of emotion, “I’m eager to talk with you both about several problems we’ve been having here in Inferus City, actually.” He grinned, showing a great deal of teeth, and Nikola blinked for a moment, overwhelmed by intense familiarity, “I think you will be very impressed with the preparations that…Doctor Magnus and her…associates, have made here.”

 

Every instinct told him to trust these two, but he was a creature of reason, and it all sounded too good to be true. “And who are you two, that we should follow you into the depths of the Earth? That is where we are going, isn’t it?” He hadn’t been certain, but they both paused long enough that he was now. The Latin name for the city was a dead giveaway too.

 

Henry whispered in his ear, “Tesla, come on, we want to find out what the Doc was doing, don’t we? Play nice!”

 

The woman looked almost disappointed as she answered, “I’m River, and this is my brother Dan. On the surface we share the name Bancroft, for reasons that shall become understood for you soon.”

 

“Bancroft. As in Patricia Bancroft?”

 

“Dan” chuckled deeply, “And you say you never paid attention to family matters.” “River” shoved Dan in the ribs with her elbow, and he frowned at her, looking chastised.

 

Nikola had just about lost his patience, and he growled softly, letting the vampire out. “Take us to Helen Magnus, now.” He hoped with everything in him that she was here. He’d dug through those ruins until the authorities had arrived. We’d waited for hours for a sign. He’d searched the ruins afterwards, as the others scrambled to hide the remaining abnormals. There was no sign of her, no scent of her blood. She had to be alive. She had to be here.

 

He was so intent on his thoughts that he wasn’t paying attention, moving mindlessly forward when the unknown man and woman swept down the corridor, expecting them to follow.

 

“Tesla, I can’t believe you didn’t notice.” Henry murmured worriedly. “The guy, his eyes went all black when you growled. It looked really familiar. Like vampire familiar, dude.”

 

Nikola jerked up his head, staring at the back of this “Dan’s” head. He was somewhat tall, with a lean frame. His movements were sure, graceful, but were they like his own? Would a vampire be somehow alive in this underground strong-hold. Was this some elaborate trap?

 

He sniffed at the air. Beyond the thousand old, faded smells of hundreds of abnormals and the fresh the smell of the HAP next to him, he could detect the man and woman ahead of him – neither were entirely human. Both seemed to stir something within him he didn’t recognize, but his gut instinct was to trust these two. His head began to throb, as though some brilliant breakthrough was bursting to get out behind the wall of worry in which he was shrouded. He focused on it, willing the insight to reveal itself, but he was distracted by another scent covering both of the people in front of them.

 

Helen. Helen had been here. Helen had been in contact with both of these people. Helen was alive, less than an hour ago if he could trust his nose. He grinned, suddenly euphoric.

 

He would get his “someday”. After he yelled at her for about a decade.

 

When the cave came to an end, it opened up into a vast cavern, at least ten stories tall. He was stuck by the beauty of this place, but even more by the sudden visceral sense of home. There was green everywhere, and the calm tinkle and splash of flowing water beneath the bridge on which they stood. There was a transport pod whirring past overhead – Praxian if Helen’s stories under the influence of good wine were to be believed, and every evidence of a breathtaking level of technology. And abnormals, everywhere. Walking freely, openly, working and talking and bustling with industry.

 

It was beautiful.

 

“I see she has been planning all this for a long time.” He muttered half under his breath, followed by some choice Serbian, “Kada ona je zdrava , ona postaje prokleto dobre batine.”

 

Both Dan and River stopped dead at that, and both turned, Dan with a look of disgust, and River with barely contained amusement, “Careful, Doctor Tesla. Mu…Magnus is considered almost holy here. There are a hundred thousand abnormals waking up around us to start a new life, and she is their Lady Time. Threats upon her person are not taken lightly.” She winked at him, and he blushed. Ok, no threatening to spank Helen once she’s healthy enough.

 

How did River, and likely Dan, know Serbian?

 

Nikola was struck speechless, blinking at his erstwhile guides while his mind sped along, churning through the remarkable reality that surrounded him.

 

Dan added his two cents, “Really, is it always necessary or you to be quite so blatant with your innuendo with her? It’s embarrassing.” He spun around and stalked off toward the front doors of one of the two huge building on the edge of the lake they were crossing. Nikola blinked for a moment, wondering why a grown man would act like a prudish teenager about his boss, and hoping this wasn’t yet another protégé half in love with Helen, a vampire protégé at that. Nikola didn’t really want even more competition, not after that kiss. Helen was his, damn it.

 

River sidled up to his left side, curling her arm through his in a surprisingly comfortable grip – especially since he rarely liked to be touched. “Don’t worry about old prissy-pants Danny. He and his wife are up at all hours with the baby and he hasn’t gotten any nookie in months.”

 

He walked on, quickening his pace to follow Dan ahead of them, and River easily followed, Henry loping along at their heels. The silence held tight around them, a little bubble in the noisy bustle of a city coming to life. Three pigeons flew by over head, and Nikola stopped suddenly, staring at the sight with wide eyes as pain throbbed behind his eyes. He was missing something, something obvious.

 

River tugged on his arm, and he stepped forward a few steps. Then he pulled his arm away and he was running. He sloughed off all the mental trappings of civilization and let out the instincts of the predator he was.

 

He knew Helen’s scent – when she was frightened, when she was happy, even when sorrow had her gripped so tight she was nearly broken. So he followed it. He brushed past Dan, following the cream colored corridors past startled residents or employees with split pupils or green skin or gills, raising a clamor that he ignored. He pushed open a doorway with medical symbol on the front and stopped at the sight of her face, her blue eyes staring into his.

 

She was there, alive.

 

He was pushed forward by Dan, who collided into him not a half-second later. “Da!”

 

Nikola turned away from Helen long enough to look at the frazzled Dan. But he could not keep his eyes from Helen, who spoke softly to the blonde beside her, then looked at him with a small worried smile.

 

“Hello, Nikola.”

 

“Hi.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. She was here. Alive. Talking. His eyes moved down her body, taking in the soft blue hospital gown, the casts on both of her legs, the various scratches and bruises on her arms, her face. But she would be fine, the shield had worked. And someone from this mad civilization of hers must have helped her get out of the ruins damned quickly.

 

“Well, when you fake your own death, you sure don’t pull any punches. All I got was a dead hobo and a trip to rainy old England. You get an explosion and a custom made paradise.”

 

Her laughed softly. “I missed you, Nikola.”

 

“We’ve been apart less than a day.” He swallowed thickly. “I missed you too.”

 

Henry, who had apparently arrived with River on his heels, chose that moment of awkward silence to yell out, “Ashley!”

 

The boy ran halfway across the room, past Nikola, and stared at the blonde standing next to the bed, his eyes jumping between Helen in the bed, and the young woman with short white-blonde hair. “Mom? What…how….”

 

Nikola had never heard Henry call Helen anything but Doc, but he knew she’d raised the boy from when the HAP was a small child. He took a closer look at the blonde, and realized that yes, despite the much shorter hair and the distinct lack of black leather, it was Ashley or a clone of the girl.

 

His head began to pound, his headache crushing– something he remembered from being human but had rarely experienced as a vampire. He brought his hands to his temples and watched this back-from-the-dematerialized Ashley run to a hesitant Henry and embrace him, tears in her eyes. He blinked hard, his vision blurry.

 

He turned to Helen, sure that somehow he was asleep and dreaming. Everything had been a dream, from the nightmare of the explosion to the dream of finding Helen’s little paradise. He didn’t know the half of it.

 

He looked at the face of his beloved, and she wasn’t looking back. She was looking intently at the four other people in the room, her eyes flitting from face to face with a smugly exultant joy in the angle of her chin, the curve of her smile. A very maternal joy. He looked at River and the arch of her nose, Dan and the wry twist of his lips and he realized something important, a piece of the puzzle.

 

“They are all your children. All…finally in the same room. How…how many years did you relive? How far did Adam drag you?”

 

Helen snapped her head to look at him, surprise warring with something that was suspiciously close to affection in her eyes. Yes, she had kissed him. Yes, she cared about him.

 

She had kissed him, but had lived another life without him. She had two more children and built a utopia. All without him.

 

This was still the nightmare then.

 

His head felt like it was set to implode, the pain lancing through him like hot spikes, his every nerve alight. He fell to his knees and the happy sounds of reunion fell away to silence as his mind screamed at him, strange voices and scents and sensations held back by the thinnest of barriers. He closed his eyes and pressed his hands into his face from forehead to chin, seeking something to ground him while his mind was at war. Something was missing, something was wrong.

 

“Nikola!”

 

Helen’s voice cut through it all, the constant that pushed back the pain. He opened his eyes to find her leaning toward him, almost falling off the bed. Dan and River were at his side, each holding on to one shoulder. He looked at one and then the other, so familiar. So right. So….his. His children. Their children. Helen and his children.

 

All the insane dreams, not just deep sexual fantasies, but dreams of taking a curly-haired girl to the zoo and having her free the lemurs….patting a dark-haired little boy as he wails inconsolably as his teeth work their way through his gum…somehow it was all real?

 

Pain detonated threw him and he began to seize, jerking as muscles clenched against his will, his mind a storm of electricity not even he could master. He lost control of his fangs, his talons, and he could scent blood in the air. From far away, he could hear panicked voices and the cool, clear voice of Helen breaking as she ordered them to turn him to the side, to fetch some medication, to bloody well move her closer to him. He nearly lost consciousness when one of the drugs they injected him with seemed to work, and he hung on to awareness by the skin of too sharp teeth.

 

They laid him on the bed next to Helen at her insistence. He was still trembling, his eyes uncontrollably flickering around the room. All he clung to was the thought of her, warm and alive, her hands cupping his face. He tried to look at her, tried to force his body and mind to work. He stuttered out, “You sttttttiiiillll lookkk hootttttt,” and she laughed and sniffled, tears on her face from the little he could see.

 

“I hope to God I never have to say this again, my love, but I’m sure you will earn the sentiment. You are an idiot, Nikola Tesla. But I love you.”

 

He exhaled softly, and his mind seemed to ring for a perfect moment, like a flawless crystal goblet rang at just a tap of the right spoon. With the next inhale, pain receded like that tide, and he was whole once again.

 

He pulled Helen into his arms, kissing his wife with care, lips pressing against hers in a chaste vow of renewal. He was whole again. She was crying, grinning at him, kissing his nose, his cheeks, the arch of an eyebrow. She was exultant.

 

He pulled away from her, and let the anger fill him for a moment, knowing it would fester otherwise.

 

His voice low, growling, hoarse, “How dare you. How dare you leave me in that state! Risking everything, even my memory of our lives, while you staged a spectacular death!”

 

She bit her lip, suddenly pale and chastised, her lips parted to speak but her daughter beat her too it.

 

“She knew you wouldn’t let her do it, Da. But she had to. She had to disappear, and in a way that would leave no doubt that the Sanctuary Network was dead and gone.”

 

He turned black eyes on his impossible daughter. Always challenging him, always his best partner in crime. His little miracle girl. “River Patricia Duka Tesla, you stay out of this. Everyone…get out. Take the happy reunions out of here and let me say my peace.”

 

Dan spoke up, his voice full of wry amusement. “Come on, Riv – you know how sickening they’ll be once they get the yelling out of their systems. Come on and let’s give Henry the proper tour. Then let him call Erica.”

 

“Ak, more lovers. You are all making me miss my Jack.” River bent down and pressed a kiss to her father’s cheek and squeezed her mother’s hand. Dan gave his father a grin that looked startlingly like Nikola’s own, and pulled his sister out of the room, Ashley pushing along a wide eyed Henry who was looking a bit shellshocked.

 

Then they were alone, finally, with nothing but the soft hum and whir of monitoring devices and the warm caress of her breath against his cheek. He could let it go, could loose himself in the victory. Embrace the future alone. He’d done it before. Over and over again, ever time he’d stolen his own memory and locked a part of himself – the better part, away.

 

He had to lance the wound.

 

Helen lay back, obviously exhausted, “Go ahead, yell. I deserve it.”

That took the wind out of his sails. He looked at his wife, at the tired lines in her brow, the dark circles under her eyes, the scratches on her cheek. She had borne the weight of their future for so long.

 

So he whispered, his voice full of secret pain and worry that not even a lifetime together could completely salve, “Why did you do it alone?”

 

She heard him. She knew him. She knew the layers of him, and knew how to strip him of his defenses like she could strip him out of his suits with the right kind of look in her eyes. “Nikola, I…I couldn’t risk you. I recorded my voice, both River and Dan and even Ashley knew the phrase to bring you back. But I didn’t think I could go through with it if you were there at my side. The only way I could trigger the self-destruct was knowing that you were on the other side of that shield wall – safe.”

 

“You let me stay an unfeeling, unmitigated idiot, still caught up in whiny plans for world domination. Even then, I wanted to stay. That kiss….you are cruel, you know. I had plans to follow up on that.” He growled softly and she smirked at him. He grew serious again, “I had faith you had some grand plan to save yourself, to call it all off at the last minute and pull victory from the jaws of defeat. I did NOT think you were truly going to blow yourself sky high! Even that idiotic me would have stayed with you rather than run away like a selfish prick.” His voice grew slowly louder, his anger at her warring with his anger at himself. The stupid things he’d said and done. The months at SCIU where he’d barely managed to hang on to his sanity, the things he’d created that they would be chasing down for years.

 

Helen heaved a tired sigh. “In this case, victory was embracing the appearance of defeat. The Sanctuary Network is gone. Declan, the other heads, those I trust have moved down into our subterranean cities. Others are working above, silently, slowly, creating understanding and awareness among the young. In time, we can emerge into the light of day in a place where we can all walk free – but only when those who would exploit fear to make political gain are long gone.”

 

“That will never happen, Helen. Human, abnormals, every creature with a pulse uses whatever they can to gain power.” She glared at him in response. “You wouldn’t have blown up your precious house if you didn’t think I was right.”

 

She winced. “Don’t remind me.”

 

“And the wine. Oh, all that beautiful wine, vaporized.”

 

She laughed, then coughed. He stroked a hand over her back and breathed slowly, trying to calm down. “You know this means I’ll have to add more to our stock here. I’m not given the cellars proper attention in the last five years.”

 

“There goes the operating budget for the year.”

 

“Details, details. I’ll sell the designs for that new battery to Musk and we’ll be swimming in money.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. The fear still lodged in his gut, like a hard knot. “I could have been trapped forever without the memory of us, moj dragi. Never, ever risk yourself like that again.”

 

“You better bloody well never lock your memory away again then. You stay by my side, even with all the damned paperwork and the three o’clock feedings when we implant our next child. No more escape into blissful ignorance for you!” She kissed him fiercely, and he fell into it, feeling her passion for him, letting her lips and tongue and teeth tell him what he needed to hear. She needed him. Wanted him. She’d never chose a path apart from him again.

 

He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her tight against him, and she hissed in pain. He let go immediately, pulling away and once again seeing her exhaustion. “You should be resting. Time enough to properly celebrate our reunion once you are well.”

 

She wrinkled her nose at him. “I’ll hold you to that. Renewing our vows by the waterfall would make a nice morale booster to distract everyone from the inevitable problems of getting a fully functioning city running smoothly.”

 

He groaned. “I was thinking of a more private celebration, ljubavi. Much more private. Have to make the best of things before we decide to bring little Hephzibah into the world.”

 

Helen guffawed and then coughed again. She kept coughing through her objection, “Really, Hephizibah? That’s worse than Bella. I still say Marian.”

 

“Well, I thought if you want an old fashioned name, we might as well go really old. Neferiti?”

 

“Oh, you….let me sleep!”

 

“Yes, ma’am.” He made to pull away, planning to immediately visit his glorious, two-story lab that he hadn’t been to in far, far too long. It would suitably distract him from having to leave her side.

 

“Don’t…don’t go. Please. Hold me – or I won’t really sleep.” It was that vulnerability, that need for him in her blue eyes. He worried that now that it was over, now she would pull away. He was an idiot, but she loved him.

 

“I’ll stay as long as you’ll have me, Helen. Longer.” He kicked off his shoes and pulled the sheets over them, settling his arms around her loosely, her head resting on his shoulder.

 

She breathed against his neck. “I love you.” And then she was asleep. He closed his eyes, and breathed in her scent. The future was theirs. Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and again, if you want to see any outtakes from this fic, please comment and suggest. I would love to play more in this universe!


	6. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief followup, because calm doesn't exist in the Sanctuary. Also a timeline from Helen's perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, if you've got an outtake you want to see, comment and I'd love to write it for you!

Epilogue - right after **The Last Time**

 

He was almost asleep when the commotion outside grew too noticeable to ignore. His eyes propped open and his teeth emerged, sharp and vicious and half-ready to tear into anything that would disturb Helen’s rest.

 

The door was pushed open, and in walked River’s Jack. The too-tall, Hollywood-handsome troublemaker who had been wooing his daughter on and off for three decades.

 

The man was entirely too much to handle right now, and Nikola wasted no time in trying to hold back his urge to fully transform into a vampire. He held a talon up to his lips, his eyes flicking over to his wife.

 

Jack put his hands in the pockets of his long coat and rocked back on in heels, a smile on his face as he looked with far too much interest in both Nikola and Helen entwined on the bed. River stomped in after him, followed by Dan, holding the sleeping bundle of his infant son, Nick.

 

Jack whispered softly, “Look, I know its not a good time, but fluctuations in the time stream never wait for a ‘good time’ to get ugly. There’s some pretty nasty people who just got ahold of Jack the Ripper who got boomeranged into 2898 by the same crazy machine that mucked up the timestream for you lot.”

 

River growled softly, mimicking her vampire father and brother with a lifetime of expertise.

 

Jack turned to her, “Sorry, babe. I’m not arguing with the positive results to the fate of the world, and me personally, but John Druitt has completely lost his everlovin’ mind. The electrical entity within him is threatening the stability of half the Earth’s infrastructure, and the death toll is mounting. No one can get close enough to kill him. I’ve been sent to do something about him, and there’s only two people known to be able to control him. Nikola Tesla and Helen Magnus. Both of whom are in another star-system in 2998. So, you interested in helping?”

 

Nikola narrowed his eyes, digesting the idea that Helen and he would still be alive in nine hundred years, and that they would be exploring the galaxy. John Druitt they could handle, but not yet. He glanced at the device strapped to Jack’s arm with unadulterated lust. A means to travel in time, with none of the risk Helen experienced. What he wouldn’t give to examine it. But not now.

 

“Come back in a month, Jack. We’ll be ready then.”

 

Jack grinned. “Will do, Pops. Have a fun time with the missus.” He turned to River, holding out his arm like the proper gentleman he was not. “Hey babe, wanna take the fun route to next July?”

 

River looked at her father, and he rolled his eyes and waved her on. Dan huffed in annoyance as his sister disappeared with a bass thump and a flash of yellow light. Helen stirred softly, and Nikola stroked a hand carefully over her shoulder.

 

Never a dull moment. Not in this family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Helen’s Timeline**

 

1850 – Helen Magnus born to Gregory Magnus and Patricia Bancroft Magnus

 

1883 – Helen Magnus meets Nikola Tesla while auditing classes at Oxford

 

1886 – The Five, led by Helen, inject a serum of the Source Blood, extending her lifespan indefinitely and recreating sanguine vampirus in the body of Nikola Tesla

 

1888 – Helen’s fiancé, Montague John Druitt, is driven mad and murders prositutes in London. After initially being suspected of the murders, Nikola is vindicated when John is revealed as the culprit. After building a stasis box with James Watson to preserve Helen and John’s unborn fetus, Nikola Tesla leaves for New York and a job with Thomas Edison.

 

1908 – Finally feeling recovered from the betrayal of John Druitt and knowing that letters from Nikola are no longer enough, Helen tempts him to join her on a study of vampire artifacts in Vienna. They spend the spring courting, but she becomes overwhelmed by the intensity of her feelings for him and flees. Shortly afterward, the British government calls on the Five to hunt down the terrorist Adam Worth. Nikola leaves once again for New York, and Helen builds her Sanctuary network with the aid of Britain.

 

1912 – Helen is finally convinced by Nikola to visit New York, and she agrees in order to look into starting a North American Sanctuary. Nikola arrives to escort her to New York, and the chemistry between them flares to life again aboard the Titanic. But there is a disaster when a lost ice kraken crashes into the ship, causing tremendous loss of life. Both Nikola and Helen survive, and in the aftermath spend weeks engaged in an intense physical and emotional discovery. Terrified by this, Helen begins to distance herself from Nikola, moving out of his rooms and throwing herself into building a new Sanctuary. They grow farther apart, until the war begins in 1914 and Helen returns to London to help in humanitarian and abnormal relief.

 

1917 – Nikola ceases his letters to Helen, and after hearing of the destruction of his Wardenclyffe Tower, Helen fears what has happened to Nikola. Influenza then hits the abnormal community, and the London Sanctuary, very hard. After her recovery, she strikes out to travel the world and look for her missing vampire. She discovers a deep love of Old City, on the West Coast of North America.

 

1922 – Nikola pops up out of the blue, luring her out of the London Sanctuary with the promise of vampire tombs in Egypt. They work together in a friendly competition with Howard Carver, and once again start their dance. Once again Helen runs, sure that if he could leave her for years without a word, he cannot feel the same as she does.

 

1943 – Helen discovers an Axis plot to kill Nikola after stealing plans for advanced technology that he has not turned over to the US government. She helps him fake his death and brings him in on her team working to defeat the Nazis.

 

1945 – After an explosion at Bletchley Park, Nikola disappears completely. She is certain he is alive, but he leaves her no word.

2008 – After sixty three years, Nikola Tesla returns to her life in dramatic fashion, only to be mortally wounded by John Druitt within an hour of his return. John drags Helen away, and she is left uncertain of his fate, impossibly angry and hopeful all at the same time. Months later, she sees him again as he helps them reclaim the Source Blood. With his help, an antidote to the dangerous Lazarus virus is developed. Ashley Magnus is abducted and irrevocably changed, leading to her dissolution into death in an EM shield.

 

1948 – Helen leaves London for good, determined to build a Sanctuary in Old City.

 

2010 – Helen journeys to Hollow Earth due to the machinations of Adam Worth, ultimately receiving a cure to radiation sickness there. Unbeknownst to her, the treatment has restored her ability to ovulate.

 

2011 – Having once lost his vampiric abilities to a tool named a “Devamper”, Nikola Tesla nearly dies after a mortal injury, but is restored to immortal life with an injection of pure vampire blood from the Vampire Queen Afina. After the defeat of Afina and her army with the sacrifice of the Praxian map, Helen can not help but attack Nikola with all the pent up passion she’s held for him since she first was intrigued with the Serbian student at Oxford. He seduces her, loves her, marks her with a deep scar of possession that may just be the vampire equivalent of marriage. Then he leaves her with an obscure note and a pair of trousers and disappears once again.

 

2011/1898 – Helen jumped through the time rift to follow and defeat Adam Worth. She is 160 years old. Within a week of her journey to the past, she realizes she is pregnant after the events following restoring Nikola to his vampire status and the destruction of Queen Afina. She contacts James once again, who comes with her to track down Nikola in Colorado, stealing his blueprints for the stasis box used to store the embryo that would become Ashley Magnus. Helen uses a memory lock device developed by James, who also tells her about his research into the ability to lock memories away with a trance technique of thought organization. He has already begun to lock his own memories away, to forget that this future Helen even exists.

 

1906 – **First Time** Helen has plans to develop an underground home for herself to hide away in, a place of respite to retreat to for the long wait, and a place of sanctuary for all of those she fears will be threatened in the war which will be brewing in 2011. To power her home, and to assuage her loneliness, she visits Nikola Tesla on his 50 th birthday, hoping he will agree toundergo memory-lock training to allow her his companionship. She believes she has deciphered that mysterious note he left her in that hotel in Addis Adaba, and that this has always been that happened.

 

1910 – **Second Time** The stasis box containing her child with Nikola, created a century in the future is possibly malfunctioning, so she risks a visit to the man she loves despite the risks.

 

1917 – **Third Time** The first time through, Nikola disappeared from her life after the low point in his career, and she had feared for his life. This time, she thinks she may have a few precious years with her mate, and she needs his help. Her plans have grown as she seeks to do the impossible, save abnormals long thought dead by keeping them in hibernation deep under the earth.

 

1945 – **Fourth Time** Helen reclaims her mate, helping him escape the plans of the US, Britain and even the Soviet Union to keep him prisoner to work on an advanced nuclear program. They begin a life together, free of the burden of their other lives.

 

1946 – Helen Magnus marries Nikola Tesla

 

1950 – A six year old River Bancroft, aka River Patricia Duka Magnus-Tesla, appears in her parents’ bedroom at the Snowdonia Sanctuary, demanding to be born. Within two weeks, Helen once again contacts James Watson, who agrees to implant their fetus. James wipes his memories clear after the procedure. River is born in early 1951.

 

1963 – Nikola and Helen travel to Louisiana to see Nigel one last time before he dies. While a somber occasion, Helen finds herself possessed of an insatiable appetite for her husband and they make love so frequently even Nikola is drained to exhaustion. In the weeks following, Helen develops a craving for very rare meat, and soon realizes that once again, she is pregnant – and this time their offspring retains Nikola’s vampire genetics. Daniel Bancroft, aka Daniel Gregory Magnus-Tesla was born in December 1963.

 

2008 – **Fifth Time** After helping his wife build over 80 sanctuaries housing close to a million abnormal residents in stasis or as caretaker staff, Nikola Tesla undergoes a two day trance to lock away sixty three years of memories, replacing them with sketchy false memories of an obsession with restoring the vampire species. He revives several corpses and leads the younger Helen Magnus into the Roman Catacombs, asking for her aid to escape the Cabal and her help to restore vampires to their “rightful” dominance, with her as his ruling queen. She rejects him, and John Druitt sweeps in to mortally injury Nikola and escape with Helen in tow. The older Helen and their children recover the dying Nikola and restore him to health.

 

2009 – **Sixth Time** Helen once again discovers that she’s ovulated at an inconvenient time, and she tracks Nikola down to Bogota, Columbia, where he’s preparing to track down a Cabal research lab that housed the Source Blood. She releases his memory block and tells him about the pregnancy, asking for his help to build another stasis box to preserve their third child.

 

2010 – **Seventh Time** Helen is busy in the final preparations for the revival of a majority of the abnormals kept in stasis throughout the underground world she and Nikola helped create. But she visits the surface and her husband who is deep undercover at the Sanctuary, worried about the younger Helen’s health. Older Helen must ensure that Nikola interferes in the right way to drive Helen to Praxis to recover her health, and as a signal to Helen’s contacts in Praxis that is it time to begin a slow, stealthy evacuation of the city.

 

2010 – **Eighth Time** After the death of Afina and her court and the revamping of her husband Nikola, older Helen brings the necessary supplies for Nikola to leave the younger Helen clothes and a crucial note.

 

2011 – Helen Bancroft once again becomes Helen Magnus, stepping into her old life and taking the reins of the doomed Sanctuary Network as the world discovers the presence of abnormals among them.

 

2011- **Ninth Time** – The memory-locked Nikola Tesla becomes very suspicious of this new Helen. She releases her husband’s memories to insure he does not collapse everything they’ve worked so hard to achieve. She needs him inside the enemy’s camp, and she needs a night of her husband’s body next to hers.

 

2012 – **Last Time** \- Helen Magnus is presumed dead as the Old City Sanctuary explodes in spectacular fashion, heralding the collapse of the Sanctuary Network on the surface. Underground, Helen recovers from injuries sustained in the explosion. Nikola can not handle the mental strain of two warring sets of memories, and goes into collapse until Helen speaks the words to release his memory lock, for the very last time. The future is now theirs.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And yes, there are bits of Whovian in here. I can't resist. This is one of those very parallel universes with no Doctor.


End file.
